(Featured image courtesy of Sequoia Grove Vineyard.)
Chardonnay has something like a 30 year record as America’s favorite white wine. Its deserved reputation for greatness undoubtedly is at least partly responsible for that popularity. Another likely reason consumers have been so drawn to the wine is it can be made in different styles to appeal to different tastes and occasions.
Many wineries attempt to emulate the richness and depth of Burgundy, the benchmark for the grape. Thankfully, at least as many produce lighter, fresher, fruitier versions that can easily keep fans drinking their favorite wine throughout the heat of the summer.
These Chardonnays typically offer the grape’s ripe fruit flavors – usually citrus, apple, pear, or tropical, and sometimes melon or fig – but in a more easy drinking style and less of the spicy or toasty oak, honey, butter, cream, vanilla, butterscotch or hazelnut.
The key to the most successful examples is balancing use of oak barrels and secondary malolactic fermentation to compliment ripe fruit with good acidity. Judicious use of oak means less oak period but also less new oakand less time in barrel. Most are whole cluster pressed to preserve the freshness of the juice. Many only partially undergo the malolactic that softens and rounds out the juice.
I have tasted over three dozen Chardonnays in the last few months and have selected the following seventeen worth your attention.
Some, like the 2012 Four Vines “Naked” ($12), actually eschew oak altogether fermenting the juice in stainless steel tanks and aging the wine in bottle. Its bright, a bit sweet citrusy Santa Barbara County fruit shines through without inhibition. Only ten percent of the Sonoma County fruit that comprises the 2012 Decoy ($20) spent time in barrel, complimenting its slightly sweet citrus, pear and spice notes. The just fifteen percent of barrel time seen by the 2012 Pedroncelli “Signature Collection” ($14) disappears behind its lively lemon/lime and tropical Dry Creek Valley fruit.
The following wines successfully use just slightly more barrel treatment. The 2013 CrossBarn (by Paul Hobbs) Sonoma Coast ($25) – with its hazelnut and butter notes, racy citrus, apple and pineapple – is a real treat. At everyday prices, the 2011 Souverain North Coast ($13) – with just enough oak to balance the sweet fruit cocktail flavors –delivers refreshing drinking. The 2012 Murphy Goode California ($14) is juicy, viscous and like tasting lemon cream pie. The 2012 Rodney Strong Sonoma County ($17) quite aromatic, with fresh citrus orange, a juicy crisp finish, and an intriguing touch of licorice.
The 2012 Sequoia Grove Napa Valley ($28) takes a different approach. While the wine is barrel aged and fermented, more than two-thirds of those barrels are neutral oak. And significantly, the wine did not go through the secondary malolactic fermentation that would have softened its crisp citrus, apple and pear flavors.
And the 2012 Artesa Carneros ($20) strikes a middle ground with half stainless steel, half oak and half malolactic yielding a fresh and juicy wine, featuring lively tropical and orange fruits broadened by lightly creamy notes. With a similar approach, the 2012 Wente “Morning Fog” Livermore Valley ($15) achieves a pleasantly fruit forward style.
As much as I came to prefer the lighter touch in my tastings, I also found several wines that underwent full malolactic fermentation and were treated with significant oak during both fermentation and aging (though spare on the new oak) but deftly walk the line between richness and freshness, making them fine choices for current drinking. Despite the abbreviated notes, they all are very good wines.
- 2011 Matanzas Creek Sonoma County ($26) succulent
- 2012 Kendall-Jackson “Grand Reserve”($22) dramatic fruit impact
- 2011 J. Lohr “Highlands Bench” Santa Lucia Highlands ($25) focused, deep fruit
- 2012 Byron Santa Barbara County ($17) spicy lemon cream
- 2012 La Crema Sonoma Coast ($23) ripe white peach
- 2012 Alta Maria Santa Maria Valley ($28) brisk but full fruited
- 2012 Wente “Riva Ranch” Arroya Seco ($22) mixed citrus/tropical fruits