Take a step out of Kansas and straight into Oz with this highly saturated and utterly opulent dessert Chardonnay from Equinox Vineyard. This wine is sweet, viscous and bursting with the aromas and flavors of woodland honey, cedar, tangerine, butterscotch and nutmeg. It is a true TBA, or Trockenbeernauslese, dessert wine made from 100% naturally botrytized fruit. The growing season that came to an abrupt close with 7.5 inches of rainfall in September (a full 6 inches above average for that month, shattering the previous record set in the late 1920s) gave growers fits with, among other things, raging botrytis infections. At Equinox we lost almost the entire Chardonnay block to this mold, also known as noble rot. And then a miracle happened: 18 straight days of bright sunshine, warmer temperatures and just the right amount of wind. These conditions are perfect for this drying fungus to work its magic, concentrating sugars in the fruit to dizzying heights while imparting the magic of botrytis complexities to the shriveling berries. It has been 20 years since we have had this convergence of weather, allowing for a true, late-harvest botrytis wine. The same process that is concentrating the sugars through desiccation is, of course, reducing yields drastically. In the final analysis, it took 2.5 vines to make one split, or half-bottle, of this elixir. Specifications 14.7% residual sugar 12.4% alcohol / 375ml 3.26 pH 8.55 grams/liter TA at bottling Hand selected 100 percent botrytis fruit harvested October 25, 2013 at 37.5 degrees brix