Wines / Tasting Wine: Chardonnay
It can’t do particle physics, or ride a dirt bike up Pike’s Peak. Nor can it hum the entire score of La Traviata. But since we are just talking grape varieties here, Chardonnay is still a bonafide superachiever. And it is nothing if not versatile – it can do rich and luscious, it can do sleek and crisp; it can do layered complexity seemingly as effortlessly as quick and quaffable. And it does all of them well. It’s enough to put you off. But even if Chardonnay shows tremendous quality and versatility virtually across the planet, in France, California, Chile, Australia, and other countries, there are certain conditions that have to be met to insure its success.
First and foremost, a relatively temperate climate. Chardonnay will tolerate perhaps a greater temperature range than, say, Cabernet Sauvignon; but as you might imagine, too cold a clime will yield a green, acidic and altogether nasty little wine.
Too hot, and Chardonnay does the same thing most noble varieties do: they lose acidity and delicacy becoming blunt, dull, common, and drinkable only if you are truly desperate, or if you happen to own the vineyard that produced it.
Secondly, and also true of some other noble varieties, the quality of Chardonnay’s wine is often in inverse proportion to the quality of the soil. Most of its highest expressions come from ground so poor, rocky and uneven, that it would be passed over as a candidate for paving as a parking lot. Limestone, schist, calcaire, granite – not exactly agricultural heaven – are some of the main soil elements in which Chardonnay will thrive, as opposed to the deep loam preferred for most traditional farming.
Over the last 30 years, California has made steady progress in making a great thing even better. Using refrigeration systems to maintain cold fermentation, preserving Chardonnay’s fruitiness and finesse, was a milestone, but things really got interesting when the old French technique of barrel fermentation was widely adopted. Allowing the tumultuous reactions of fermentation to take place in an environment like an oak barrel, which actually interacted with the juice, and was not just a neutral element in the process – now that was magical. If you add to it the further embellishment of lees contact, i.e., the practice of leaving the newly-fermented wine in the barrel along with all of the spent yeast cells, solids, etc. which we collectively call lees, which add rich, earthy notes to the wine, you are then talking about something ambrosial.
Some California winemakers (including ourselves) will go even further with Chardonnay, putting some or (much more rarely) all of a given wine through what is called malo-lactic fermentation. This is not a real fermentation which involves yeast, but actually a micro-biological process in which a Chardonnay’s malic acids, (such as in pippin apples,) are converted to lactic acids, (as in yogurt.)
Doesn’t sound appetizing? Well, it can take a little getting used to. But most wines which seem especially smooth and luscious and … well … creamy, have undergone this process. When you hear about buttery Chardonnay, you are hearing about malo-lactic Chardonnay.
| FRUIT | SAVORY-SPICE | VEGETABLE |
| Apple: | Vanilla | Bell pepper |
| Delicious | Toast | Green bean |
| Granny Smith | Smoke | Asparagus |
| Roma | Butter | Hay/grass |
| Johnathon | Cream | Eucalyptus |
| Pear | Honey | Menthol |
| Peach | Butterscotch | Mint |
| Apricot | Rosted almond | Rhubarb |
| Pineapple | Brandy | |
| Coconut | Bacon | |
| Nectarine | Roasted grain | |
| Lime | Yeast-Lees | |
| Lemon | Hazelnut | |
| Grapefruit | Coconut | |
| Melon | Nutmeg | |
| Papaya | Resin | |
| Mango | Clove | |
| Banana | Allspice | |
| Kiwi | Cinnamon | |
| Lychee | Ginger | |
| FRUIT | EARTH | FLORAL |
| CHARACTER | ||
| Baked | Steely-Flinty | Wildflower |
| Stewed | Gravel | Generic floral |
| Jammy | Mineral | Orange-Lemon blossom |
| Dried | Clay | Gardenia |
| Ripe | Dust | |
| Unripe-Green | Mushroom |
