(First Published in Food & Wine in March
01)
The
world’s most famous soccer club, Manchester United, has a great
many fans in Ireland. Too many, some of us would say. That is why
the ABU, Anybody But United, club is almost as popular. You just get
sick of the sight of them and their fans everywhere. The world’s
most famous grape, Chardonnay, has a similar problem, if that’s
the correct term, in that some of us think it’s too popular for
it’s own good. It’s on every retail shelf, wine list and in
every wine column. There seems to be no escape. Hence the ABC club,
Anybody But Chardonnay.
Well,
I have bad news for paid up members of this wine club.
Chardonnay’s not going to go away, any more than we are likely to
see the demise of vanilla ice cream any time soon. It’s just too
damn good and too versatile and has such universal appeal. Unlike
grapes that have a singular appeal, such as Riesling, or Sauvignon
Blanc, grapes that have a distinctive character that can’t be
hidden, a character that you may or may not take to, Chardonnay
adapts or moulds itself to it’s climate and to the whim of the
wine maker. It is a chameleon. It has as many guises as United have
playing strips. Some may not appeal but one surely will. The
pineapple and wood splinters style of cheap Aussie Chardonnay is as
unappealing as that dreadful blue and white patterned United strip
from a few years ago. However a Daniel Defaix Chablis premier cru is
as cool as Roy Keane and the boys kitted out in all black.
With
so many styles, how do you know what to expect when you buy a bottle
labelled with the magic word Chardonnay? Geography is very
important. Chardonnay is not, as some might think, a town in S. E.
Australia, rather it is a village in Burgundy. Its genesis may or
not be here, but Burgundy in Eastern France is at the heart of our
story. The reason that the rest of the world grows so much of it is
because of its success in Burgundy. Rather like little boys who grow
up and want to be like Manchester United’s Beckham, vignerons as
far apart as Margaret River or Monterey dream of making Montrachet
(by the way, you don’t pronounce the ‘t’).
But
even Burgundy is not an homogenous style. In cool Chablis the wines
can be lean, green and refreshing. In short the definitive dry white
wine. Struck flint is
the classic mineral aroma to look for. Most of the time oak is an
unnecessary encumbrance, although some premier and grand crus employ
it. Further south in the Côte d’Or. The village names,
particularly in the Côte de Beaune are as hallowed to wine drinkers
as the names of the United European cup winning side, inscribed on
followers hearts forever. For Best, Law and Charlton (yes I
preferred the 1968 vintage) read Montrachet, Meursault and Corton
Charlemagne. Sadly you need to be earning nearly as much as the
present team to afford them. Meursault tends to start at £20+ and
Montrachet at over £100 per bottle. Ouch!
What
do you get for the money? Sheer
class of course. White Burgundy from the Côte d’Or is much more
reliable than its red Pinot Noir based counterpart. These wines are
fermented and aged in small oak barrels. They have such extract and
depth though that the oak rarely overwhelms. Butter and hazelnut are
common characteristics with a sour cream like flavour from ageing on
the lees. Fruit is more evident in younger wines and can often, I
find at any rate, have a peach and sometimes apricot like character.
Oak can contribute vanilla and smoky notes, flavour components that
can combine beautifully with the wines own natural character.
Further
south in the Mâconnais and Chalonnasie the wines rarely have the
depth of character, or fortunately with the exception quite
unjustifiably of Pouilly Fumé, the same price tags as their
northern cousins. They do give pleasure in a less serious or
demanding format. Flavours can be of apple, honey and nuts with some
of that butter or cream if you’re lucky. In the rest of France
Chardonnay makes lean sub-Chablis styles in the Loire or Jura and
sub-Australian styles in the midi. But don’t forget Champagne
where it is part of the holy trinity of grapes that makes the
world’s finest fizz.
Climate
is vital. This grape is a conduit for sunshine. In the cool of
Chablis flavours of Granny Smith apples can be found. But take the
vine somewhere warm like Australia or Chile and the fruit becomes
tropical. How tropical depends on the winemaker and how much
fruitiness he or she seeks to retain. Almost all New World
Chardonnays will have melon like flavours and maybe pineapple and
guava too.
The
winemaker’s input is vital too. These days winemakers often talk
about the wine making itself and describe their job as like a
midwife delivering on the potential of first class fruit. Not with
this grape though. There are just too many options. The artist and a
blank canvas is a better metaphor. Which colours, let alone whether
it will be oil, pastels or watercolours are questions to ask.
The
winemaker as artist can create almost any style. It can be made
successfully into a sparkling wine or a dry wine. A few brave souls
even turn out dessert styles and no doubt somebody somewhere is
experimenting with fortified styles. The dry whites can be made into
myriad styles. An increasing number of labels proclaim themselves as
unoaked. If oak is employed it may be wood chips, staves or barrels
of various provenance. Cultivated or wild yeasts? Malolactic
fermentation or not, or partial even? They’ll all effect the
flavour. Indeed you can make an assemblage of wines with all these
different characteristics.
Savvy
ambitious New World winemakers, looking to mimic Burgundy, are
likely to deliberately oxidise the juice before fermentation to lose
some of the tropical fruit aromas. They’ll allow indigenous wild
yeasts to ferment that juice in a mixture of old and new French oak
barriques and have partial malolactic fermentation to contribute a
buttery note, yet retain freshness. The results can be nutty and
creamy in a most convincing Burgundian style. The most successful
exponents of this are the Californians and sadly, they are apt to
charge even more than the French. Sonoma Cutrer ‘Les Pierres’ is
a classic example. Oddly California also turns out oceans of
uninspiring, bland, off dry Chardonnay under the banners of the big
brands with very little, except perhaps Fetzer, in between.
This
is a grape where it really pays to read the back label on the
bottle. Knowing how hot the climate was will tell you how much
fruitiness to expect and then you need to find out about oak use. No
oak and it will be refreshing and clean. Fermented in oak will mean
it’s a full on ‘meat and two veg’ style. Beware back labels
that mention oak but don’t actually use the word barrel, employing
phrases like ‘subtle oak treatment’. It means they have used
wood chips and the results can be coarse with flavours like sawdust
if not done carefully.
The
comparison with United is I feel an appropriate one. Even if you are
a fully paid up member of the ABU club, if you have any feeling for
‘the beautiful game’, you have to admit that at times they do
play it more beautifully than anybody else. So it is with
Chardonnay. Yes sometimes I think I’m sick of the sight of it, but
when you taste a sublime Burgundy, your heart soars and you remember
why you ever became passionate about wine, ‘the beautiful
drink’.
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