The Chardonnay Grape

Chardonnay is a grape with a limited (not very aromatic) taste. It produces neutral wines that need help to become interesting.

This can be done in several ways. One common way is to ferment or store the wine in oak barrels.

Chardonnay also easily absorbs the taste of the soil (terroir), and this is consciously used to complement Chardonnay's taste profile in Europe.

Quality Chardonnay wines always have a round character, a great length, and a rich after-taste, but Chardonnay shows a multitude of styles all over the world, from totally uninteresting, strong alcoholic wines with artificial fruit aromas, to the world's most sublime, perfect balanced wines.

In cool climates, Chardonnay can have a light body with noticeable acidity and flavors of citrus, green apple, and pear.

In warmer locations the flavors are more yellow apple, peach, melon, and tropical fruit such as pinapple.

Chardonnay is popular for 3 important reasons:

• Easy to drink
• Easy to grow
• Easy to sell

Chardonnay wines have no sharp edges and no high acid content. The grape produces large crops and it is not picky about soil and climate. The fact that the wines are easy to sell, also contributes to the grape's popularity among the wine producers.

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Chardonnay Plantings

USA France Australia Italy South Africa Chile Argentina New Zealand Spain

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Chardonnay Vinification

Many of the Chardonnay flavors come from terroir (soil) and climate.

But, Chardonnay is also a "Winemaker's grape", and in the hands of a good winemaker, real magic can happen in the wine cellar.

Unoaked Chardonnay is stored in steel or plastic tanks, while oaked Chardonnay is aged in oak barrels.

Steel Tank Chardonnay

Steel tank fermentation produces light and mineral Chardonnays, like the famous French Chablis.

These regions are known for high-quality steel tank Chardonnay:

• Cool Climate Regions
• Chablis, France
• Loire, France
• Trentino-Alto Adige, Italy
• Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Italy
• Sonoma, USA
• Oregon, USA
• Western Australia
• Chile
• Argentina

Malolactic Chardonnay

Malolactic Fermentation (MLF) softens the acidity and produces a creamy (buttery) texture with flavors of butter and hazelnut, like the famous French Mersault.

Oaked Chardonnay

Barrel Fermentation, storage, and aging will cause the wine to absorb taste from the wood, like vanilla, caramel, spices, smoke and toast flavors, like Californian Chardonnay.

Oak adds flavors to wine, like Vanilla, Caramel, Smoke, and Coconut.

Oaked Chardonnay is also more creamy. This is from a process called malolactic fermentation that happens in the oak barrels. This implies that the malic acid from the grapes are converted to lactic acid, like the acid in milk. This gives oaked Chardonnay a buttery taste.

Sparkling Chardonnay

Chardonnay is an important component of many sparkling wines:

• French Champagne
• French Cremant
• Italian Franciacorta.

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Chablis vs California

Chablis in France and California in USA are good examples of two very different expressions of the same grape.

Chablis is best known for producing excellent, fresh, and light wines with appealing apple and citrus aromas

California is best known for power, heavy oak, and tropical aromas.

People who like Californian Chardonnay with low acid and high alcohol, may say that a young Chablis is too acidic, and some people may say that they don't like the taste of Chardonnay, because they don't like the taste of oak.

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Chardonnay DNA

In a joint study published in 1999, American and French scientists said DNA research had proved that the Chardonnay vine was a cross between two others: Pinot Noir and Gouais Blanc.

The village of Chardonnay is located in the Haut-Mâconnais in Southern Burgundy, and along with 26 other villages it produces the famous Mâcon-Chardonnay. Under the Mâcon-Chardonnay appellation we find 100% Chardonnay white wines and red wines produced from Pinot Noir and Gamay grapes.

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Chardonnay Terroir

Bad soil means higher quality grapes!

It sounds like a paradox but in poor soils the roots must work harder, branching off to find nutrients. This increases the root-to-soil surface.

Chardonnay is the most widely planted white grape variety because it adapts easily.

The better performance in the world is in Bourgogne and its clay limestone soils. Here every plot expresses its own Chardonnay (Climat).

We can identify three main Chardonnay styles in the Bourgogne winegrowing region, depending on where it is grown:

• The Chablis Premier Cru and Grand Cru are planted on Kimmeridgian clay limestone. The name comes from the english village of Kimmeridge where it was originnaly discovered. The 'Kimmeridgian Chain' starts in the South coast of Great Britain and stretches to the top french soil: Champagne (Aube), Loire (Pouilly, Sancerre, Touraine, Menetou-Salon) and Bourgogne (Chablis, Beaune, Tonnerre, Auxerrois). During the Jurassic age, these areas were a shallow sea known as Paris Basin and today we can still find fossils of seashells buried and compressed into rock and taste them in form of minerality and salinity. Petit Chablis, the lowest in the Chablis hierarchy, does not come from Kimmeridgian soil and tastes more fruity.
• The Côte de Beaune brown limestone and calcium-rich Jurassic soils. A vine’s roots can reach down as far as 10 yards into the soil to draw nutrients. The further south you go in Burgundy, the more you taste the ripeness of the grapes in your wine. Chardonnays from Côte de Beaune have a more intense gold color and taste of white-fleshed fruit.
• The Côte Chalonnaise and the Mâconnais are located in Southern Burgundy and the grapes have no problem ripening here. Cremant de Bourgogne and crisp, (usually) unoaked Chardonnay such Pouilly-Fuissé AOC are from here. The soil is Jurassic limestone.