Mount Eden Vineyards 2009 Chardonnay (California)

Anticipating this was going to be a great Chardonnay I baked a cake to celebrate this wine and I was NOT impressed! On the nose, musky powerful aromas that I could not really grasp, maybe some mushroom, truffle and lemon grass. Honestly on the palate all I could taste was heavily buttered popcorn. A little butter is OK but it was to much. We drank a glass each and them retired it to the refrigerator for the evening and opened a bottle of something else. I  have this un-canny attitude to never give up on a wine so I tried it again the next day. It was still over-powered by butter so again I retired it to the refrigerator. By the third day it was actually drinkable, the butter flavor had diminished greatly and the diacetyl (natural byproduct of fermentation) had softened leaving flavors of lime, lemon, white peach and pear. Diacetyl occurs naturally in alcoholic beverages and is added to some foods to impart a buttery flavor.