California Chardonnay and the Artistic Success of Its Greatest Producers
Attending a well-curated tasting of top California Chardonnays just may restore your faith in one of the world's greatest wine grapes.
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Wrap your head around this: in 1965 there were approximately 300 acres of Chardonnay planted in the entire state of California.
The same year there were 9,000 acres of Palomino for making sherry-styled wines, 3,000 acres of Burger (which even then was thought to make inferior wine), 2,000 acres of Sauvignon Blanc, 1,500 acres of Colombard, 1,300 acres of Sylvaner, and 1,200 acres of Semillon. 400 acres were planted to Riesling! Before 1968, Chardonnay acreage was so tiny, it was listed under the "Miscellaneous" category for white wine grapes by the California Department of Food & Agriculture.
In less than 10 years that was about to change. Dramatically.
Fifty years ago in 1976, the 1973 Chateau Montelena Chardonnay, made using a blend of grapes from Sonoma County and Napa Valley, shocked the international wine establishment by finishing first in the now-famous Paris blind tasting competition, beating out fine white Burgundies evaluated by an all-French jury of experienced tasters. (For an entertaining look at all of this, watch the movie Bottle Shock.) The competition results were announced in a minor article in Time magazine, and Chardonnay, which had just begun to be seriously planted, was off to the races.
Steven Spurrier, organizer of the 1976 Judgment of Paris. Photo by Sarah Stierch. CC BY 4.0
By the mid-1980s, everyone wanted to drink California Chardonnay, perceived to be America's prestige white wine because of its association with Burgundy's rarest and most expensive white wines like Montrachet.
American tastes, however, coming off the white Zinfandel and Blue Nun boom, were a bit too sweet-oriented for traditional Burgundian-style Chardonnays, so some savvy vintners tailored their fermentations to leave a little sugar in their wines. The result was a fatter texture and a pleasing fruity character that shot wineries like De Loach and Kendall-Jackson to the forefront of American wine competitions and popular success.
They had found a novel formula that casual American wine drinkers were drawn to, and hundreds of producers followed. In the 1970s when California was pointing toward replicating the style and quality of Burgundy, a decade later the tide had shifted. Big money flowed into California to craft more appealing home-grown styles for a new generation of wine discoverers.
American consumers, always looking for bargains, flocked to the new stuff. In late 1982, when I began my career in the wine business, the price of most quality Napa and Sonoma Chardonnays was $12 a bottle; sweet-tinged Kendall-Jackson Chardonnays could soon be found all over town for $6.99.
Cheap Chardonnay can still be found everywhere you look. Apparently, it's good enough. Skillful winemakers can make drinkable wine from overcropped inferior fruit, using oak derivatives, grape must and malolactic fermentation to round out their wines. Grown in warm climates on cheap, irrigated land, Chardonnay was—and still is—produced in tank farms very inexpensively. Remember the Two-Buck Chuck phenomenon? I do.
Quality Chardonnay cannot be grown at 10 tons per acre. Classic natural acidity can't occur in Chardonnays grown in hot climates. Adding acid to flabby wine isn't just cheating, it makes wines that a lot of people eventually tire of.
Today there are approximately 83,000 acres of Chardonnay in California, the second most planted wine grape behind Cabernet Sauvignon. California Chardonnay, much maligned because of its ubiquitousness and the oceans of mediocre wine capitalizing on its image of a prestige variety, is polarizing as many wine lovers have moved on to other satisfying white wines in the world.
It bears repeating that great wine comes from great vineyards. Quality Chardonnays grown in cool climates on great soil with low yields, are necessary ingredients to compete with the great Chardonnays of Burgundy.
After the California Chardonnay boom of the 1980s and 90s, we ended up with a handful of traditionalists making great Chardonnay for those willing to spend the money, and everyone else drinking so-so Chardonnay because it was cheap and kinda "fancy." And there was little else on white wine lists. Everything else had been elbowed out by the Chardonnay juggernaut.
Overcoming Chardonnay Backlash
Success breeds imitators making a lot of so-so versions of Chardonnay. A backlash quickly developed. "ABC—Anything but Chardonnay" became a snarky catch phrase. To be fair, exaggerated styles of Chardonnay, impressive in tasting room settings, still suit a lot of people nowadays or vintners wouldn't continue to make wines this way. Even legendary Robert Parker, Jr. who had a big influence on winemakers creating bigger-is-better wines, admitted that Chardonnay wasn't particularly good food wine. He wasn't talking about French Chablis, I assure you. He was responding to the new generation of hyper-popular full-throttle California wine.
Painting all wines of a certain category with such a broad brush means you'll be missing out on the rarer examples of true inspiration buried among the mass of selections available. Yes, climate change has created new challenges for vintners worldwide, and that includes Chardonnay growers. (In some places like New York and Oregon, warming has improved the conditions for top-quality Chardonnay.) Yet the newer trends to keep high alcohol in check are much more difficult when proper ripening impedes it. And backing off the percentage of new oak barrels allows quality fruit to emerge, a welcome trend.
Chateau Montelena winery near Calistoga, Napa Valley. Photo by Gear$Head. CC BY-SA 3.0
Why, then, does Chateau Montelena still continue to make thrilling Chardonnays? The same with other classic producers throughout the state. And newer entries like Racines, Dragonette, and Liquid Farm in Sta. Rita Hills, and a handful more in Santa Cruz, Monterey County and Anderson Valley. Some are admittedly "California" in style, others still look toward Burgundy as their north star. Great soil, cool climate conditions and respect for the vintage are the qualities that make for great Chardonnay in California.
Attending a well-curated tasting of top Chardonnays just may restore your faith in one of the world's greatest wine grapes, and wine lovers should jump at the chance to discover the ladies and gentlemen who are bringing us their finest work. If you're interested, check out this Friday's tasting (6/5 at 7:30pm), where we're pouring exactly that- California's Best Chardonnay.