As Anthony Schroth poured a group of us tastes of his chardonnay, a few of us were skeptical.
With the label Jackson Hole Winery, I am willing to bet you would have been skeptical, too.
Schroth, a 30-year-old winemaker who splits his time between Jackson Hole and Sonoma, Calif., had invited us for a tasting in advance of this month’s Film and Food Series, for which he will be providing some wine.
We sipped. We tasted. No one said anything for a few seconds.
“It tastes just like a Russian River chard,” said Liz Gibbs, marketing director for Fine Dining Restaurant Group. “You should do a blind taste test.”
With grapes from the Russian River Valley, why wouldn’t it? Except, this chardonnay — and Schroth’s Rendezvous Red — were aged and cellared at the Schroth family’s home on Boyles Hill Road, 6,229 feet above sea level and about 1,000 miles from the heart of California’s most popular wine region.
And now, months after opening the state’s second winery, Schroth’s wine is ready for consumption (it can be purchased at Dornan’s, The Liquor Store and Bud’s. Restaurants with it on the menu include Trio, Calico, Nani’s, Amangani, The Cowboy Steakhouse, Thai Me Up, Shooting Star, White Buffalo, and The Silver Dollar Grill.
“We have enough bottles left to get us through the summer and early fall,” said Robert Schroth, Anthony’s father and a partner in the family winery business. “The wine was very well received by the wine buyers in the valley, as the first week of orders was far more then we expected.”
