Wine Opinion: Californian chardonnay comes in from the cold
Anything But Chardonnay was a backlash against the buttery, over-oaked style of wine that had become synonymous with California, and even I can't help but think about it as I pull up outside the Napa Valley Vintners building in St Helena for a tasting. I was just a little bit nervous about what I was going to find.
To be fair, Napa was hardly insensitive to the criticism. Perhaps stung by the ABC movement, chardonnay has fallen out of favour in the vineyards. In the 1990s, the grape overtook riesling as the most planted variety in California.
One problem may have been that chardonnay is simply too amenable. It can be all things to all people, depending on where it is grown and how it is made. Ferment it once and you get steely and tart crisp green apple notes. Throw in a secondary fermentation and you can transform those tart notes to a softer, creamier texture and taste. Add in some new oak and perhaps a dash of specially selected yeast and you get even more of those round buttery notes.
The ever-adaptable chardonnay is having something of a comeback tour right now. There are increasing numbers of winemakers who want to prove that California is not intrinsically unsuited to growing this particular grape and that it may even have some spots that can tease out flavours not unlike the best of Burgundy. The ABC movement, they point out, arose from choices made by winemakers in the cellars.
A new generation of producers is taking the risks needed to make the kind of compelling chardonnay that walks the line between minerality and weight.
Chardonnay did, of course, prove its worth in California way back in 1976, when Chateau Montelena won the Judgment of Paris with its 1973 vintage.
"We are conscious of the history of course," Montelena winemaker Cameron Parry says. "We never carry out the secondary malolactic fermentation on any of our whites and only use around 10 per cent new oak for ageing (the rest is a mix up to eight-year-old barrels). Fermentation is first carried out in stainless steel, and then we age the wine on the fine lees but without stirring to add creaminess without interfering with the acidity."
Montelena is joined by a new wave of producers working in similar ways - farming in less hospitable areas, tracking down better quality clones, experimenting with yeasts, harvesting at lower sugar levels, holding back from the secondary fermentation, using less oak and upping ageing in stainless steel. The Carneros area got the ultimate seal of approval with HDV, a partnership between Larry Hyde of Hyde Vineyards and Aubert de Villaine of Burgundy's Domaine de la Romanée Conti.
Equally worth looking out for are smaller producers such as Steve and Jill Klein Matthiasson, who started making waves with their unusual white wine blends of Italian and Bordeaux varieties. They then took on chardonnay from a variety of plots across Sonoma and Napa and gave it a serious twist by ageing it in neutral oak and redefining the style towards a greater expression of minerality and lift.
Of the wines I tasted during my time in California, there were a few that fit the cliché of "Fat Elvis chardonnay", but there were also some profoundly impressive bottles, most notably for me were Matthiasson's Linda Vista Vineyard Chardonnay 2012, Cakebread Cellars Napa Valley Chardonnay 2012, Beringer Luminus Oak Knoll Chardonnay 2012, Frog's Leap Napa Valley Chardonnay 2012, Grgich Hills Estate Napa Valley Chardonnay 2012, Trefethen 2012 Chardonnay, Chateau Montelena Chardonnay 2011 and Stag's Leap Napa Valley Chardonnay 2012. These don't just deserve another look, but a full private screening.
