Had an interesting encounter with a bottle of Woodlands Chloe Reserve Margaret River Chardonnay 2007 at what will remain an unnamed restaurant by the ocean. After looking through the wine list, the 2007 Chloe caught my eye, at the reasonable price of $100.00, it is normally about $60.00 retail, the current vintage is 2009 and is always a great expression of Margaret River Chardonnay, with some 2 years of bottle age sounded good. The wine was ordered and when the waitress brought the bottle out and showed it, yes it’s Woodlands and it is a 2007 chardonnay but then I noticed that there was no Chloe on the label, it was a bottle of their entry level Chardonnay about $20.00 – $25.00 retail. After pointing this out, the wine was taken away and a bottle of the Chloe was brought out opened and poured a bit about that later. We still had the wine list with us, so flicked through it again to see what they charged for the straight Woodlands Chardonnay, it was nowhere to be found on the wine list. One has to wonder why a wine that is not on the wine list is sitting in their fridge.

You can see just how similar the two wine bottles are.

Not a great deal of difference in looks and if you were not familiar with this Winery and its Wines the Chardonnay could very easily get passed off as a Chloe, especially as it was a 2007, a nice little earner if that was the intention.