2009 Scholium Project Naucratis Lost Slough Vineyards

Schoener’s reassuringly good current portfolio includes the 2009 Lost Slough Vineyard Naucratis Verdelho. It is good to see a California estate making Verdelho. While this cuvee will not make anyone forget the inexpensive Verdelhos emerging from Spain, this is a crisp, lively wine with notes of white currants and citrus blossoms, attractive fruit, good freshness and light to medium body. It is best drunk over the next 12 months. It is hard to believe, but there are a few wine writers who believe that making something that is undrinkable and unstable is somehow compelling and worthy of comment. I had had so many bad wines from the Scholium Project run by Abe Schoener that I was thrilled to find the following five wines all stable and ranging in quality from very good to outstanding. I don’t know what to make of that. I stopped reviewing the wines of Coturri years ago because they were microbiological time bombs, and since they bottled barrel by barrel and used no sulphur, I was infuriating subscribers by recommending certain wines that were literally impossible to drink because of the unpredictability and extreme variation from bottle to bottle. Hopefully, Schoener has solved the bottle variation issue. He does have something in common with both Helen Turley and John Wetlaufer. They are all connected to the wonderful educational but somewhat eccentric, tiny college in Annapolis, Maryland called St. John’s where Schoener taught philosophy, and where Helen and John met as students. www.scholiumwines.com