Wine of the week: Goldschmidt’s ‘Trig Point’ 2014 Chardonnay

Nick Goldschmidt is shooting for a house style of chardonnay that leaves you with an appetite for more.

“I want you to want to have a second glass,” he said. “The first glass is easy, but do you want another?”

The answer is yes, if it’s the Trig Point, 2014 Sonoma Coast Chardonnay at $17, our wine of the week winner.

Goldschmidt pulls it off, bringing great winemaking to an affordable bottling. The Trig Point has aromas and flavors of pear, melon and a bright note of mineral. It’s well crafted and a steal for the price.

Goldschmidt’s goal is to make a balanced, bright, dry chardonnay with intrigue. The winemaker has an edge because chardonnay is something he has studied from all angles.

“I also make chardonnay in Canada, Chile, Argentina and New Zealand, so I understand style,” he said. “I know what makes each area unique.”

With all his travels, Goldschmidt can be called a “flying winemaker,” but this frequent flyer has a great appreciation for Sonoma turf.

“What makes Sonoma chardonnay different from other places in the country and the rest of the world is the plant material we still have and the soils,” he said. “This is truly a unique place to make the wine.”

Goldschmidt and wife Yolyn are a husband and wife team from New Zealand who have succeeded in California by embracing the terroir.

“I know a lot of growers, and I know the soils I like,” Goldschmidt said.

On the wine’s back label, we learn what’s behind the name Trig Point: “I spent my childhood holidays helping my mathematical genius father, Donald Goldschmidt, setting out survey lines from Trig points on the tops of hills.”

Goldschmidt said his father went to the South Pole in 1957 and 1958 and surveyed the Ross Ice Shelf, the largest in Antarctica. “I have always admired him as having done something that let people know more about the world,” he said.

Goldschmidt shares the great explorer’s genes but channels his curiosity into winemaking.

It all began in 1982 with a vineyard at the Lincoln University of Christchurch, New Zealand. Goldschmidt was working there with lead researcher, scientist David Jackson.

“We made many experimental wines. The fact that you could take something that was growing and turn it into something else brought out all the questions an inquiring mind would have had when we were young and impressionable,” he said.

Goldschmidt said he was taken by the twists and turns involved with combining wood and yeasts and other ingredients to make something altogether different.

These days Goldschmidt is something of a chef with an ingenious recipe.

“The wine undergoes partial malolactic fermentation, but I do it during the primary fermentation so there is not a lot of butter, but you do get the texture. Also, I have the alcohol around 14 percent and the acidity higher than typical, so you get this crispness.”

Even consumers who are less interested in these technical aspects than in how the wine tastes will be wowed by this chardonnay, including many who will be tempted to ask for a second glass.