Your First Real Wine
By Matthew DeBord
HQ 50 | WINTER 2004
If you’ve ever taken a wine class, you know that, by and large, newcomers to wine drinking are usually started out on light, simple white wines — the extremely popular Pinot Grigio, for example, the quintessential Italian lunch wine. I have always thought this is a mistake, for two reasons. First, light and simple white wines, with their spry, citrusy flavors, are enjoyable, but they hardly make a lasting impression. Second, fine wine is all about the combination of winemaking talent and quality of grapes. Straightforward white wines, usually produced quickly and in volume, are about neither.
My recommendation is to skip those easygoing little whites, reserving them for summer picnics, and head for a real white wine, Chardonnay.
Chardonnay is the most popular white wine grape in the world. You can find it in South America, France, Australia and of course California, where it is, to put it mildly, a very big deal. Now, you might ask yourself, how can one grape become so hot, worldwide? It’s actually not that complicated. Chardonnay, as my former Wine Spectator colleague James Laube has pointed out, is a “blank slate” grape; its flavors vary from region to region (no one mistakes a hefty, fruit-forward high-alcohol California Chard for an oily, minerally one from Burgundy), but its quality is largely dependent on what the winemaker does to it, assuming a healthy harvest.
There are exceptions to this. Any fan of Burgundy, where Chardonnay is the only white grape allowed to be used, will tell you that the specific vineyard site, with their unique characteristics, makes all the difference, and that the winemaker merely allows the grape to express itself. But by and large, Chardonnay is a winemakers’ grape. For this reason, drinking Chardonnay is like taking a mini-wine course.
You’ll want to know a few things before you get started, however:
- Chardonnays from California tend to combine powerful fruit with aggressive oak treatments. What’s an “oak treatment?” Well, winemaking often involves barrels. In California, winemakers use them to impart deep, toasty flavors to their Chards (and sometimes flavors such as vanilla). Combined with the intense fruit flavors that California’s climate already gives Chardonnay, this can make for powerhouse packages. In fact, winemakers in other regions have become so taken with oak treatments that they sometimes overdo it, with their less intense base wines. This can make you feel as if you’re drinking a glass of lumber, or pineapple juice stirred with a tree limb.
- Chardonnays from Burgundy, in France, have lighter fruit and tend to receive accordingly gentler oak treatments. This is a key distinction.
Basically, there are two types of oak barrels in common use in winemaking: French and American. American oak is more intense; French is gentler. If a Burgundian winemaker were to use American oak, it would wipe out all the subtle aspects of his wine. In my experience, white Burgundies age far better than California Chardonnays. This is primarily due to Burgundy’s higher levels of acidity. In California, by contrast, fruit is all.
- Australia, known for wines that are even more fruit-driven than California, produces a genre of Chardonnay they call “unwooded,” meaning that no oak is used in the production of the wine. This leads to wines that lack that oaky char, but also to wines that can err on the syrupy side.
- Many cheap, bulk-brand Chardonnays from around the world deliver an oaky punch, but not because they ever spent any time in barrels. Instead, winemakers who want to bring an oaked Chardonnay to market, but who don’t want to invest thousands of dollars in barrels, can throw oak staves into their wine, adding oak flavor. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this, despite the sneers wine snobs usually aim at the practice. In the end, it allows wine drinkers to experience oak at a much lower price.
- Armed with this basic knowledge, you can now venture forth into the exciting world of Chardonnay. I recommend starting in California, because it’s fairly easy, and also because its Chardonnays will give you a contemporary benchmark to use in comparison against French and Australian versions. An excellent starter wine is produced by Gallo of Sonoma; it’s widely available, and it usually retails for around $12. It is a definite California Chardonnay, for its price-point: somewhat oaky, with rich buttery fruit, lovely spice, and plenty of body. Not complex, but delicious. A nice wine with chicken or salmon, and an excellent example of why Sonoma is a great Chardonnay region.
- From here, you can move to Australia. Anything from a large producer, such as Rosemount or Penfolds, will fit the bill. What you’ll notice right away are fruit flavors that show more tropical nuances: pineapples, bananas, papayas, mangoes and so on. The wines will also be sweeter than their California counterparts.
Now that your palate is set, turn to France. Inexpensive Chardonnays from the country’s southern region of Languedoc resemble California Chardonnays, and they’re labeled by grape type, rather than wine region. But to really take in French Chard, you’re going to have to look at Burgundy.
A good jumping-off point is the Macon. These Chards are less expensive and less intellectually demanding than, say, the heavy-hitters from Mersault or Montrachet. They are less rewarding, in the end, but they can give you a sense of what Chardonnay in Burgundy is all about. What you’ll notice right away is that the wines — because they are lower in alcohol and produced in a place where the weather is not always Californiawarm — have less sweetness and more zing. But you’ll also detect some textural differences, and maybe even pick up some funky undercurrents.
This is all perfectly okay, as “Old World” Chardonnays, and the winemakers who produce them, go for these qualities. They will often ferment their wine in oak barrels, in order to give them a yeasty flavor that comes from the “lees,” or the dreggy leftovers of the fermentation process; they might also put their wines through what’s called “malolactic fermentation,” which converts apple and pear flavors into creamier notes. (By the way, plenty of California winemakers now employ these techniques, as well.)
The upshot is a wine of terrific complexity and personality, even at lower prices. Of course, if you’ve trained yourself on rich, lusty Aussie Chards, all this might seem off-putting to you. Give it a chance, but don’t become obsessed. If you like big fruit, you like big fruit. Make no apologies. One of the great things about Chardonnay is that it can be wonderful when it’s fruity and wonderful when it isn’t.
Not exactly something you can say for Pinot Grigio. So c’mon, step up to real wine.
