How to drink wine #2: Chardonnay
To me, Chardonnay used to simply be “the wine my sister likes.” I have now joined the “chardy” train myself. This is what I have discovered.
Chardonnay is too popular to be cool – so don’t offer it to your hipster mates – and suffers from a saturation of poor wines. It is for this reason that I combine the sins of wine bibbing with that of filthy lucre and buy EXPENSIVE (or at least expensive in a normal person’s sense, i.e. more than £15 but not so much that actually drinking it seems like a waste).
Chardonnay grapes have their origins in Burgundy, France and are used to make champagne, white Burgundy, Chablis, and — outside of France — bog standard “Chardonnay” where it tends to be “fruitier” than the leaner old world varieties.
The grape itself offers a somewhat neutral flavour and so the wine relies on the oak of the barrels in which it is fermented and/or the local terroir — the environmental influences (e.g. soil, climate) of the region to give it its flavour. For the French, terroir is all-important, which is why a Chardonnay from Burgundy is a Burgundy and not a Chardonnay but a Chardonnay from Australia can never be a Burgundy. Such is the tyranny of the appellation d’origine contrôlée (AOC)!
I have had a fair share of unimpressive Chardonnays so it was a pleasure to enjoy this 2017 Wolf Blass Gold Label. Decanter calls it “buttery” but it was almost like cheese, at least in its aroma. That makes it sound awful but it definitely isn’t. This all comes from the conversion of malic acid, which produces the tartness of grapes, into lactic acid and is characteristic of the New World Chardonnays. The taste is smooth and carries vanilla notes gained from its fermentation in oak. Yum.
By comparison, this Premier Cru Chablis definitely had the quality one would expect from a Premier Cru designation (tier two out of three) but I found the buttery Australian a notch more interesting.
So, Chardonnay: splash the cash a little, go New World rather than French (there are better European whites) and enjoy a refreshing wine with a creamy, fruity finish.
Next: Riesling. Sehr gut!
