Chardonnay Day Masterclass

Chardonnay is the most planted white grape in the world, yet in some ways its over-familiarity can work against it.  Winemakers all over the world turn out vast quantities of wine from this variety, much of it destined for supermarket shelves where it delivers perfectly acceptable but rarely very interesting wines.

Yet ask any wine critic which white grape variety has the potential to produce top quality wines, and most will answer “Chardonnay”.

They could also point to Grand Cru Burgundy wines as evidence that Chardonnay can make the most expensive white wine in the world.

A further muddying of the waters stems from the “Anything but Chardonnay” (ABC) consumer backlash in the USA in the 1990s, where it seems you can have too much of a good thing (whether it was “good” depends on whether tropically fruit flavoured, full-bodied, high alcohol wines with a very notable oak flavour were your thing).

So how to decode this enigma?  As the French would say “it all comes down to terroir”.  It is certainly true that as Chardonnay will ripen successfully in almost any climate (if you include sparkling wines then it even works well in England) and it reflects very well the growing environment, you can produce a plethora of styles purely based on climate variation alone.  Ah, but back to terroir, there is more to it than simply the climate – Chardonnay reacts differently depending on soil, aspect and elevation, giving further possibilities for variations in style and complexity.

The final element is winemaking technique.  Chardonnay can be produced very cleanly and crisply with minimal intervention in the winery, it can also have “the kitchen sink thrown at it” – oak barrels for fermentation and/or maturation, “malolactic conversion” and lees aging are very common for premium Chardonnays.

With such a broad range of options how to do justice to this grape in a single tasting of six wines?  It’s a tough call but we will do our best.

We start with a sparkling wine, made exclusively from Chardonnay, a “Blanc de Blancs”. Moving on we sample two French Chardonnay’s from its original home territory of Burgundy.  However, Burgundy is quite a big place, and the two wines reflect that difference; firstly, a Chablis Premier Cru demonstrating the cool climate, purity of fruit that it can deliver and then an oaked full-bodied wine from Pouilly Fuissé.

Now we step outside France, we could go virtually anywhere next but let’s start with Australia.  The cooler climate regions of Adelaide Hills and Yarra Valley excel with this wine, as does Margaret River and it is one of these that we will sample next.  Moving onto South Africa, where we will see what the cool coastal region of Elgin renowned for Chardonnay can do.  Finally, where else but California, renowned for big oaky wines, but carefully selected there are some stunning (and expensive) wines made with real care and dedication these days. If you've never had a premium Californian Chardonnay, prepare to be impressed!

The time of “ABC” is long gone.

This event can be purchased as part of our 4-week “Superstar Grape Varieties” Masterclass.