Chardonnay is the world’s most changed wine

Wine styles have evolved enormously this century, from concentrated and beefy to fresher and lighter. But no varietal wine has changed as much as Chardonnay. The Chardonnay that featured so frequently in Bridget Jones’s Diary was big, bold and comforting. It wouldn’t be now.

White burgundy is the classic (and most expensive) example of Chardonnay, even though it rarely says Chardonnay on the label, and Meursault is one of white burgundy’s most famous names. The stereotypical Meursault of the 1990s was described as “buttery”. Today, I defy any taster to find butteriness in any of the Meursaults made by the village’s most-admired exponents, the likes of Coche-Dury, Roulot and Arnaud Ente. Kitchen descriptors of contemporary Meursaults would be more likely to include lemon juice, salt, even the steeliness of a knife blade. These wines are taut and tense with marked acidity.

The same evolution is evident in just about all Chardonnays. Overt oakiness, so popular towards the end of the last century, is way out of fashion. The adjectives Chardonnay producers now like to use for their wines are “mineral”, “steely”, “crisp”, “ethereal”, “fine boned” and so on.

As tastes have changed, and summers are warming up in traditional wine regions, all over the world new, cooler regions have been developed to provide grapes for this slimline style.

Even California, whose Chardonnays for so long tasted sweet and oaky with more than a hint of popcorn, has seen a step change in the style of Chardonnays made by all but the most commercial producers. Today’s California hotspots for sought-after Chardonnays are Sta Rita Hills in Santa Barbara County and Sonoma’s chilly coast (not necessarily all of the Sonoma Coast appellation, which is far too extensive and includes some relatively warm inland areas). Almost on the Pacific Ocean there are vineyards — many of them only relatively recently planted — that are regularly shrouded in fog and pummelled by wind. Grapes can struggle to ripen there.

The Sta Rita Hills wine region, a six-hour drive south, is not quite as close to the ocean but is wide open to icy Pacific influence because of a gap in the coastal range. Cold winds in the afternoon and nocturnal fogs make this one of California’s coolest districts. The result in both cases is the sort of high-acid Chardonnays currently in vogue.

Oregon to the immediate north of California is in the process of discovering its aptitude for the Chardonnay grape, having concentrated almost exclusively on Pinot Noir reds for years. The climate in Oregon wine country is, or at least has been, generally much cooler than in California so the state naturally produces Chardonnays with freshness as well as fruit.

For those of us in the UK, the textbook Chardonnay of the late 20th century was Australian — surely Bridget Jones’s favourite. It was instantly recognisable. The gold had a distinctly greenish tinge, the result of the then national obsession with protecting Australian grape juice and wine from oxygen. But once fermentation was over, Chardonnays were exposed liberally to oak, so a typical Australian Chardonnay then was greenish, rich and oaky.

Fast forward a decade or two and Australian Chardonnay was transformed into a wine so tart and lean that some became positively austere. The best Australian Chardonnays made today retain the zest but have discernible fruit too. New regions, earlier picking (by hand rather than machine), ambient yeasts, much less protective winemaking and larger or older barrels with less obvious oak flavour have all played a part.

New Zealand is an obvious place to look for wines with zest. Average temperatures are considerably lower than those of any Australian wine region other than Tasmania (whose Chardonnays can be exemplary). This means that brisk acidity is a leitmotif of NZ wines, as is evident in the oceans of Sauvignon Blanc produced. But I have long argued that New Zealand Chardonnay is a much more interesting wine than most Sauvignon Blancs.

The dramatic weight-loss phenomenon so evident across the Tasman doesn’t seem to have affected NZ Chardonnays, which have always had an agreeable balance between ripe fruit and refreshing acidity. Kumeu River, a family winery in the Auckland suburbs, has long been hailed as a valid challenger to white burgundy, sharing a US importer with Domaine de la Romanée-Conti no less.

Like New Zealand, South Africa is well able to produce the sort of refreshing Chardonnays that are fashionable today, thanks to cooling ocean currents, and in some cases due to usefully high vineyards where nights are cool. South African wines also have the great advantage, for consumers rather than producers, of relatively keen prices.

The Chardonnay Association of South Africa recently organised a blind tasting in their most important export market, the UK, of 34 Chardonnays, including 12 from outside South Africa. There were five white burgundies; three made from English grapes, an unexpectedly high number; and two each from cooler parts of California and Australia.

The average price given for the South African Chardonnays was about £36, an average dragged up by the £65 asked for one of the best wines shown, from wine producer Creation, Glenn’s Chardonnay 2023, but three were under £20. Most of the South African Chardonnays were notably good value, none more so than the Graham Beck sparkling Blanc de Blancs. Chardonnay is not just the world’s most planted white-wine grape, it’s also the most versatile, making wines still, sparkling and even occasionally sweet. Virtually all champagnes, except those labelled Blanc de Noirs, contain Chardonnay and those labelled Blanc de Blancs are almost invariably 100 per cent Chardonnay.

Almost all of the world’s wine regions produce some Chardonnay and many of them, including Canada’s Ontario and both Yarra Valley and Adelaide Hills in Australia, see it as a speciality of theirs. Argentina, of course, specialises in Malbec but I’ve long been impressed by some Argentine Chardonnays.

There is no shortage of fine Chardonnay in the world, but it’s a particularly homogenous category, not least because so many are made the same way (see ‘How is Chardonnay made?’ below). Probably the most difficult question in last week’s Master of Wine tasting exams would have been: “These three wines are all Chardonnays. Where does each come from?”

Tasting notes, scores and suggested drinking dates on Purple Pages of JancisRobinson.com. International stockists on Wine-searcher.com
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