CheapWineFinder Podcast
Talking about remarkable wines that pair nicely with your wallet! Because we like to keep it cheap but excellent.
CheapWineFinder Podcast
From Livermore’s Legacy to Your Glass: Wente Morning Fog Chardonnay 2023
A single sip of Wente Morning Fog Central Coast Chardonnay 2023 tells a bigger story—one about a 140-year family legacy, a game-changing clone, and the craft behind a clean, vanilla-tinged style that wins without the heavy butter. We open the bottle and trace Wente’s roots in Livermore, where the family helped shape modern Chardonnay by selecting and improving clones that now appear in roughly three-quarters of U.S. plantings. That history isn’t trivia; it directly affects how today’s wine tastes: brighter fruit, better balance, and reliable quality year after year.
We get granular about technique in a way that’s friendly and useful. Why split fermentation between neutral American oak and stainless steel? Neutral oak lets in a whisper of oxygen to round the texture, while stainless preserves crisp green-apple notes and freshness. Then there’s lees aging and bâtonnage—stirring the lees to add creaminess without piling on heavy oak flavor. The result is a Chardonnay that leans vanilla over butter, with a lively mid-palate and a clean finish that plays well with salads, white fish, and simple white pasta. If you’ve written off Chardonnay as too oaky, this bottle is a welcome reset.
We also talk value and consistency. Morning Fog keeps delivering at a price that makes it a weeknight staple and a party-safe pick, with scores around 90 points backing up its reputation. Expect green apple, gentle vanilla, and a calm, polished texture that suits a wide range of palates. If you’re building a small wine lineup at home, this is the versatile slot—easy to serve, easy to love, and easy on the wallet.
If our breakdown helped you find your next fridge-door white, follow the show, share this episode with a Chardonnay skeptic, and leave a quick review so more wine fans can discover smart, affordable bottles. Cheers to keeping it tasty—and keeping it cheap.
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Hey, hello, it's Domain Dave, cheapwinefinder.com. As always, uh, we write up a review on the cheapwinefinder.com website, value pricewine. Something I find interesting anyway. And then we plug in the microphone, and well, there we are. And today we've got the Wente Morning Fog Central Coast Chardonnay 2023. And Wente was founded in 1883 in Livermore, California. Livermore is on the other side of the San Francisco Bay, kind of uh south and west of San Francisco. Back then, in those days, that's where the wine industry was happening. Now it's up north of the San Pablo Bay, which was north of San Francisco. But back then, this was the place to be. Wente is the oldest continuously owned and operated family vineyard in the United States, and what they are maybe best known for is developing grape clones. Flaxron and in and pests and disease in France devastated the wine industry. And they needed to come up with grapes that were more resistant, more tolerant, and that were stronger. And Wente was one of the well, maybe the pioneers and the leaders of that. Today their Chardonnay clone is in 75% of all the Chardonnays in the U.S. And I was at a Bordeaux tasting a couple years ago, and I was asking one of the um wineries about what clone they use. I don't know why I did that. I must have been reading something about clones, and they said uh we use the Wente clone, and they said they took a Bordeaux, you know, a cutting from Bordeaux and improved it. It proved the clone to where it was healthy and disease resistant, and it it did the you know, made great grapes, so they helped us, and then we brought it back to Bordeaux. So Wente is instrumental in the wine industry today. They have um and they're still making great wines. This morning fog is the uh entry level, if you call it entry level. Uh they make a bunch of different wines, but they've been making, they were the very first people to make a Chardonnay wine to grow the Chardonnay grape. And that's 1883. So we're talking 140 years or something ago. So they know what they're doing. And I've loved the morning fog ever since I tasted it. It's this one's a little different. It used to be a from Livermore at this time a Central Coast. I think they own uh they have vineyards in Livermore, and I think a Royo Seco in um in Monterey, but I don't know if these come from their vineyards. They could they could source it out. They've been they've been around forever, they they do know everybody, so they could go out and and buy grapes, or this could be their own grapes. I don't know. They don't really say since they don't say it, man, maybe it isn't, maybe it's maybe it's a mixture. I'm gonna take a sip. Plastic Chardonnay. Here's the thing: if you don't like butter in your Chardonnay, because that's what oak will give it, and in a in a in a Chardonnay does um pick up those oak flavors and do give butter. This one is not butter, it's vanilla. If you don't like butter, try vanilla, it works. This is a really tasty wine. It's got uh mostly apple, it gives you that green apple, and this one is uh 50% uh fermented in a neutral uh American oak and 50% um fermented and stainless steel, so you're getting those two different flavors going on. Neutral oak doesn't add flavor, but a barrel is waterproof or watertight, but not completely airtight. You don't want too much air to get in there, but a little bit changes thing up from stainless steel where it's completely airtight. And then it was um aged in American oak again and stainless steel, and part of it's on leaves, part of it's not on lees, part of it's got stirred lees. You stir the lees and it gives the wine a little bit of a cream, which might be with this vanilla I'm tasting, and also some salty and maybe nutty things. Sometimes those salty, nutty things get caught up with the flavors. So I'm not really catching that here, but I am getting the vanilla, and which I think is that batonage. Batonage is where they stir the leaves. Leaves are dead yeast and bits of grape, the residue. And uh it sounds batonage sounds cool, but it means stick. I mean, all this all these French words and wines sound, oh, that sounds impressive, and it means something silly. I mean something very basic. I'm gonna take a little sip. Delicious. I mean, it's just a good Chardonnay. They've been making it forever, they know what they're doing. I'm gonna actually pour myself a little more in my glass because I'm running low. This is a very versatile chardonnay. You could have this with salads and you know, white fish, uh uh white pastas. Or you can just drink it because it tastes great. So there you go. I this is a this is a favorite of mine when it comes to Chardonnay. Um the morning fog has been a favorite for over 10 years, and it's at a good price. And uh, what else do you want for a wine? And this, and I also noticed that um it got 90 points from various um you know uh wine wine reviewers over the years in wine magazine. So, this is something that's that routinely gets rated very highly for a value price wine. That's always good to see, and it's because they've been around forever, they know how to make Chardonnay, and they made a good one here. So, adios, keep it cheap. This is uh Domain Dave, cheapwinefighter.com. Winte Morning Fog Central Coat Chardonnay 2023. It's just good Chardonnay at a good price. So that's it for me. Keep it cheap. I'll be talking about it in a couple days. We got more wines to do, and we'll start getting Halloween wines. So, adios, bye bye.