All Chardonnays Are NOT Equal

Chardonnay is one of the most versatile of wines.  It pairs well with a variety of foods and can also be wonderful as an aperitif before dinner.  But chardonnay is not always predictable.  Depending upon where the grapes were grown and what techniques the winemaker used, a particular bottle might be filled with tropical flavors and aromas or dominated by buttery, creamy tastes, or, in some cases, both. 

I recently got together with some friends to try several current releases of chardonnay from various regions around the world.  They all had a few things in common:

●Price:  Each was approximately $10-15.

●Availability:  Each is generally available locally.

●Consistency:  Based upon my recollection of them in past years, each is generally consistent in flavor and quality from year to year – when you open a bottle, you know what to expect.

●Typical Style:  Based upon my recollection of them in past years, each is typical of a particular style of chardonnay that is popular among other winemakers from the same region.

We had seven tasters, all with different levels of experience with, and knowledge of, wine.  Each graded each wine on a 20 point scale, based upon standard tasting criteria.  (If you would like to use the form yourself, it is available free of charge at www.californiawinehikes.com.)  The wines were not tasted blindly, and therefore, everyone knew which wine they were grading.  In many wine circles, this would render the tasting worthless because of the belief that the name, reputation, price and/or label of a wine can influence the taster’s judgment and enjoyment of the wine.  In this case, I didn’t worry about that too much since all the wines cost approximately the same amount and all have solid, if not spectacular, reputations.

Although I was interested in the final results of the tasting (i.e., what wines got the best total score), I was even more interested in discovering which wines had the widest variations (i.e., some people loved them while others hated them).  I discovered, though, that that didn’t happen much.  Even when I tossed out the high and low scores for each wine, they still came out pretty much in the same order.  So, here’s what they were and how they did:

1.                  2006 Kendall Jackson “Vintner’s Reserve” (California; approximately $14).  It is probably no surprise that this wine has been the best-selling chardonnay in the United States for the last 17 years.  Based upon our tasting, that’s not going to stop with the 2006 vintage.  It is a nice balance of tropical fruits and rich, buttery flavors.  It was the number one wine for five of the seven tasters.

2.                  2005 Wolf Blass Yellow Label (South Australia; approximately $13).  This wine wasn’t anyone’s favorite, but it was a consistent second or third choice for all the tasters.  The flavors emphasize buttery, oaky flavors over fruit, but it is an easy-drinking wine that would pair well with lots of chicken, seafood and pastas in cream sauces.

3.                  2007 Lindeman (South Africa; approximately $13).  This wine is the only 2007 in the tasting and it reflects its youth.  It is still a little “green” and tastes as though all the different flavors haven’t yet married.  Nonetheless, only one taster really disliked it and several found many things to like.  It definitely shows tropical fruit flavors as well as some apple characteristics with a hint of earthiness (that is typical of South African wines).

4.                  2006 Chateau Ste. Michelle (Washington; approximately $12).  This wine might have suffered from its lack of buttery, oaky flavors, which most people associated with chardonnay.  Instead, this wine is a fruit-driven wine, with tastes of apples, pears and grapefruit with a hint of spice.

5.                  2005 Red Bicyclette (France; approximately $10).  I’m convinced that at least one taster penalized this wine for the use of on English word and one French word in the name.  He noted that the winery should have picked one language and stuck with it.  Nonetheless, even if we give the wine the benefit of the doubt and toss out that taster’s score, this wine did not do well.  Of course, it figures that this would be the cheapest wine in the tasting.  This label is part of the Gallo family of wines.  It is simple and not very interesting.  Some tasters experienced an unpleasant aftertaste.

Although we wanted to include an Oregon chardonnay, we could not find any locally that fit our price criterion.  Unfortunately, Oregon’s growing season is usually a bit too short to produce good chardonnay and few wineries make it.  Because of the relative scarcity and difficulty in making it here, the good Oregon chardonnays are pretty expensive.