Welcome, our previous lesson introduced wine varietals and classification. In this lesson, we will discuss one variable Chardonnay. So, let's get started. Probably the white wine that's the most on everybody's mind and the most dominant on so many wine lists these days is Chardonnay. Chardonnay has become perhaps the most widely known, widely planted white wine grape in the world. While it has classic old world roots and styles, for example, burgundy and Chablis, it is now considered an international varietal. International, in the sense that it is grown everywhere and produced everywhere that fine wines are made. Its ancestral home though, if you will, is Burgundy in France where it has been traditional for centuries in the cool continental climate of Eastern France. Chardonnay works well in this region because it's an early ripener. So, it's less problematic, if the cold weather comes early in the fall or the rains come early in the fall, you are still able to ripen a crop of Chardonnay and pick it, get it off the vine and make wine because of its early ripening capability. Thanks to modern DNA studies, we now know that the genetic parents of Chardonnay are Pinot Noir. Interestingly enough which is a red grape and white grape called Gouais Blanc. The former, Pinot Noir, is a classic Burgundy in red but the latter, Gouais Blanc, is a mediocre variety that is neither made into wine these days nor is it even permitted to be grown in the classical grape growing regions of France. Chardonnay has a whole host of descriptors and we usually find it to have some fruitiness that we associate with apples and pears. Sometimes the apple is more of a baked apple note. We find stone fruit which would be pear and peach, possibly white peach. We find citrus notes, sometimes lemon zest or lime. Banana, melon, tropical fruit, pineapple, and mango are found. Sometimes a fresh simple chardonnay with no noticeable oak component will smell like Juicy Fruit gum. Chardonnay is also known to have some minerality. Minerality is an interesting term that tasters use and it refers to the smell or the flavor of wet rocks or whetstone or wet concrete sometimes. Chardonnay can be earthy or spicy. If the Chardonnay was fermented and or aged in oak, then that's a wine-making stylistic choice. The wine will result then in a wine that has woody notes. The smell of vanilla bean, sort of a toasty char note sometimes butterscotch and caramel. If the wine has gone through that secondary fermentation, malolactic fermentation, it will have buttery notes. Sometimes people say it smells like brioche or creme brulee. There is sometimes a nutty hazelnut almond characteristic as well. Chardonnay, well considered by many to be a "classic" or noble variety is somewhat neutral when it's made without any wine-making stylistic touches such as oak and malolactic. If it's grown in a cold continental climate such as Chablis, for example, it can have a very firm acidity and a touch of minerality but flavors that give us mainly apple and pear and citrus zest. The wine making tradition in Chablis is to use only neutral fermentation and aging containers and in the modern era that would be mostly stainless steel. If it's ever put into wood at all, the wood is old and neutral, imparting no oak flavors at all to the wine. The wine is never allowed to go through that buttery secondary fermentation, malolactic fermentation. Where winemakers choose to ferment and or age Chardonnay in oak barrels and possibly to subject it to that secondary malolactic fermentation, the wine then can acquire charry, woody notes which can result in the smell of vanilla bean in the wine. The malolactic imparts a touch of butter and transforms the wine into a completely different manipulated, stylistic wine style. Sometimes the barrel can give us a toasty note, vanillan flavor and these flavors are acquired during this fermentation and secondary fermentation and aging. There'll be a video available for you, talking a little bit more about the type of oak flavors that can result in a wine. I'll also supply another video that talks a little bit more specifically about malolactic fermentation and the resulting flavors. So, these acquired flavors of oak and butter can actually occur in any white wine that is similarly treated. I can take any other fairly neutral white grape variety, crush it, press out the juice, and ferment it in oak and age in oak. We might not be able to tell in the final wine whether or not it's chardonnay. We tend to not find these barrel aging characteristics and secondary fermentation characteristics in wines that are considered to be more aromatic, the aromatic whites, for example, Riesling Muscat, Gewurztraminer, Viognier, and so forth. Because winemakers feel that these oaky buttery flavors clash with the aromatics, the fruity floral notes of the aromatic whites. So, neutral wines such as Chardonnay are used for the stylistic treatment. In this lesson, we discussed Chardonnay. In our next lesson, we will discuss another important wine varietal, Chenin Blanc.
