WTN: 2004 St. Julian Winery Braganini Reserve Chancellor (Michigan)

St. Julian's Chancellor has been one of my favourite Michigan reds for a few years now. The 2004 example of the Braganini Reserve impressed me highly for its elegance and aromatic palette. Saturated cherry-garnet in colour, it showed impressively in the glass - it had that characteristic hybrid blackness when viewed from the side of the glass, but upon closer inspection, was in fact translucent. Gorgeous nose of torrefazione and subtle cherry fruit framed by high-quality oak spice; dry with palate-cleansing acidity and perfect balance. It was served slightly chilled and went wonderfully with dinner. An excellent red for the table, and indicative of what the right approach can produce.

this wine is at least partly aged in air dried michigan oak - which is very tight grained and gives a quite subtle flavor.

Many thanks for that info, Dave. I really found this particular oak spice to be attractive ... bonus points (ugh - did I say "points"?) that it's local Michigan oak.

Here in Ontario, we have a tiny number of producers experimenting with local Ontarian oak. I hope that the number of wines aged in Ontario oak increases because then the wines, in their integral whole, will be even more "of this land", if you will, than they already are!

the difference between barrels made from air dried vs. kiln dried is far more significant that the differences between american and european oak. for really high quality, they should be air drying. in st. julian's case, it was harvested in MI, sent to KY to be cut, returned to MI for air drying, and returned to KY to be made into barrels - so i am told. st. julian had a small grant to help with this project and offered to sell the barrels to othe MI wineries. several took them up on it.