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California Chardonnay: The move toward a two-party system
• by Jordan Mackay
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There are some things in life that simply divide people, tastes that are so decisive and mutually exclusive that everybody pretty much likes one or the other, but rarely both. For instance: democrats or republicans, the Marx Brothers or the Three Stooges, milk chocolate or dark chocolate. These are the issues upon which, for better or worse, people take a stand, and you can tell a lot about individuals by regarding their tastes in these areas. In wine, the line is embodied by Chardonnay or not-Chardonnay.
California’s most widely planted grape, Chardonnay, incites passion on both sides. Some love it more than life itself, some detest it with a fervid and religious passion. Some complicated and conflicted people feel both ways, as a sommelier friend who has told me that Chardonnay makes both the wines she loves the most in the world and the wines she hates the most. The favored bottles are white Burgundy, of course, which are almost exclusively Chardonnay (there are some small plantings of Pinot Gris) and are some of the most expensive wines in the world. The detested wines are generally California Chardonnay. And she’s not the only one with this bias. If you’ve been at all into wine in the last five years, you’ve probably heard of the ABC crowd, the people who profess they’ll have “Anything But Chardonnay.”
Why the antipathy toward this humble grape that can’t even defend itself? Largely, I believe, it’s a question of overexposure and a question of style. As Chardonnay became the It-grape in the ’80s, it seemingly was the only grape you’d find by the glass at restaurants. While Merlot became the metonym for red wine, Chardonnay was the equivalent on the white side. This fashionableness unfortunately coincided with a period where the wine’s identity, if it had one at all, was troubled by the searching and awkward forces of adolescence.
A relatively new grape to many California vintners in the early ’80s, Chardonnay was often planted in zones that were too warm for it. This assured the growers that the grapes would ripen, but also assured that they would have low acidity and high alcohol. In addition, the winemakers were becoming aware of Burgundian techniques such as barrel and malolactic fermentation, but would often apply them with little discretion to their suitability to a specific wine. For instance, Chardonnays in Burgundy all undergo malolactic fermentation to convert tart malic acids into creamy lactic acid. Simply aping Burgundian methods, winemakers in California routinely encourage this process without consideration as to whether it is necessary, whether the natural acidity of the grapes is too high (which, in many cases, it is not).
At the apex of these trends, Kendall-Jackson came out with a Chardonnay that wasn’t dry. Its residual sugar gave it a sweet finish that appealed to the inexperienced American palate that was discovering wine through the lens of White Zinfandel. Kendall-Jackson remains the most popular Chardonnay and helped to entrench the style of homogenously oaky, buttery, flabby wines that became popular despite the fact that they didn’t taste like wine and didn’t pair with food. Several winemakers I talked to attribute the popularity to some dominant voices in the press who embraced the style and whom it behooved to prop up the California wine industry. Winemakers, in turn, decided to allow the market to determine the styles of their wines, as opposed to determining what styles best fit the grapes they were getting.
Whatever the reasons, it’s no secret that much Chardonnay from California and other new world countries (Chile, Australia) is not classically good wine. If more people could try minerally, earthy and crisp white Burgundy alongside the flabby California versions, they would taste the difference. While great white Burgundy is prohibitively expensive, it’s possible to find a decent Marsannay, Chablis or Rully for around $20. Try these wines with food against a Kendall-Jackson and the differences should be obvious.
Can great Chardonnay even be produced in California? I began to wonder. But after much searching, I decided that, unequivocally, great Chards can be produced in the new world. And it’s slowly starting to happen in California, as more producers realize that to simply set themselves apart in this ultra-competitive market, they have to stylistically diverge. They’re also finding that it makes better wines. Thus, we see, even in relatively large-production wines like La Crema, a reduction in oak on wines grown from cooler and cooler areas (which emphasizes the natural acidity and crispness in the grapes). We see a wine like Morgan Metallico from California’s central coast, which is fermented in tank, has no malolactic fermentation and sees almost no oak.
The mere existence of these wines along stalwart “Burgundians” like Hanzell or Stony Hill, suggest a slowly brewing revolution in California Chardonnay. While Kendall-Jackson and its cronies will remain in power for a long time to come, at least we’re moving to a two-party system.
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