Many American wine-drinkers swear by Chardonnay. Many swear at it.
But people buy it, a lot of it.
A recent survey by Restaurant Wine Magazine showed, for 2005, of the top 60 wines sold in the restaurants surveyed, 21 were Chardonnays, and the wine also accounted for 34.4 percent of restaurant sales. White wines outsold reds by a margin of 2 ½ to 1, a rather solid victory. And the five most popular wines sold in American restaurants – hold onto your wine glass! – are Kendall-Jackson Vintner’s Reserve Chardonnay, Beringer White Zinfandel, Cavit Pinot Grigio, Sutter Home White Zinfandel and Inglenook Chablis.
These are inexpensive white wines, all light and innocuous, with a surprising amount of added sugar. I thought California winemakers use of French terms like Chablis had been abandoned (Chablis refers to a specific district in the Burgundy region of France; the grape for Chablis is the Chardonnay), but I recently came across a new bottle of Hearty Burgundy, so obviously, whatever goes around, comes around. . . .
So I tasted a group of Chardonnays over the past week or so, and here are my personal results, in alphabetical order:
Bogle 2005 California ($9) – Grapes from Monterey and Sacramento Counties make a wine that is a superior value, with pleasant flavor, a slight buttery tinge and a smooth finish.
Clos du Val 2004 Napa Carneros ($22) – Very good, with superior balance, nice citric overtones, classic Burgundy style of lean crispness as opposed to the American style of wood age and buttery, malolactic overtones. Outstanding with oysters on the half shell.
Courtney Benham 2005 Napa (about $15) – One of the good value wines from Martin Ray, here is a safe, middle-of-the-road table wine, nice with mild fish like tilapia. Pleasant fruit, slightly acidic.
Franciscan Oakville Estates 2004 Napa ($35) – Labeled "sauvage" for the use of wild, natural yeast to bring fermentation instead of injecting yeast into the fermenting tanks, this is a delightful wine with big but not overpowering flavor and slight citrus tones. Delicious.
Huntington 2005 Sonoma ($15) – A pleasant wine with good balance, leaning to the acidic end of the spectrum, with grapefruit a background flavor. Solid finish, good wine to accompany dinner.
Rodney Strong 2004 Chalk Hill, Sonoma ($14) – A delightful quaffing wine, for afternoons on the porch. Long, smooth finish, good texture, silky and approachable.
Talbott 2002 Monterey ($55) – Expensive, but unusually good, the wine is neither fined nor filtered, which adds to the texture and gives it a heartiness not often found in California offerings. Extra age also helps bring balance and excellent structure from the aroma through to the finish.
And a pair of superb bargain wines from Argentina came through the tasting room the other day – a white and a red from Inca, a northern Argentina winery that grows grapes in the Calchaqui Valley. Both are blends, and for $9 a bottle, they are a terrific value. The white is 80 percent Torrontes and 20 percent Chardonnay, so it has a familiar aroma, but the wine is very much in the Burgundy style, fermented and aged in steel and arriving crisp, slightly acidic and a splendid addition to the collection. The red, 80 percent Barbera and 20 percent Merlot is even better. The Barbera, an Italian grape, gives it wonderful body and deep, berry notes throughout; the Merlot softens its rough edges and creates a long finish. A beauty.
–Joe