Dan’s Cellar Notes for August 2005

By Dan Mouer

Know your grapes: Chardonnay

What is there to know about Chardonnay? Isn’t this one of the most popular grapes for wine in the entire world. Isn’t Chardonnay…well, Chardonnay? Yes, and no. [You knew it couldn’t be easy, right?].

Chardonnay is the justly famous white grape of Burgundy, where it originated. It has also become the universally grown and recognized white wine grape worldwide. Chardonnay is an amazingly forgiving grape, in that it can be grown in a wide range of climates, harvested over a broad range of ripeness levels, vinified in numerous different ways, and still produce good-to-excellent wines. While there is a lot of variation among Chardonnay styles—from fat, buttery-oaky Napa style to crisply pungent Champagne—the resulting wines are generally recognizable as Chardonnay.

So you want to make some Chardonnay? You have many, many choices. The number of Chardonnays available in kit format is huge, and they vary greatly in style. When going for a Chardonnay kit, you should carefully read the manufacturers descriptions. Some kits are going to make low-acid wines while others will make a crisper version. Some will stress fruit flavors and aromas, while others will emphasize oak, vanilla and butter. As a general rule, Chardonnay grown in cooler regions will produce a crisper, more refreshing wine, while hot-country Chardonnay will tend to be higher in alcohol and rounder and fuller in body.

Feel free to leave out the oak that accompanies a kit, or to add just part of it. Oak and Chardonnay are a marriage made in Heaven, but we sometimes get so used to the flavors imparted by the oak that we lose the varietal flavor of the grape itself. You may also want to try using a different yeast than the one supplied with your kit. Many kits use a S. bayanus (Champagne of Prise de Mousse) strain of yeast because it will usually ferment flawlessly and cleanly. However, there are many yeasts available to we home winemakers, and each strain imparts its own characteristics to the wine. Lalvin’s ICV D-47 is a perennial favorite for dry Chardonnay.

Would you like to make your wine from grapes? Chardonnay was the first Vitis vinifera variety to be commercially produced here in Virginia. I can still remember being pleasantly surprised by my first bottle of Piedmont Vineyard’s 1980 vintage. For the home winemaker, each harvest brings a few more Chardonnay sources out of the woodwork, so to speak. There are vineyards willing to sell to home winemakers from the Eastern Shore to the Mountains.

Most commercial vineyards in Virginia tend to produce the majority of their Chardonnay wines in a fresh “stainless steel” style, as compared to the rich, barrel-fermented or barrel-aged style so common in California and Australia. There are a number of reasons for this, including vineyard managers rushing to harvest too early to avoid loss due to molds or to tropical storms that come threatening in August and September. Under ripe Chardonnay will generally make better wine of the “stainless steel” sort. Of course the main reason is consumer choice: the Virginia public just seems to prefer the cleaner, fresher-tasting wine over the fuller, richer variety.

As a home winemaker using local grapes, you have control over the style of Chardonnay you produce. Last year my winemaking partners and I produced two very different wines from the same grapes. The grapes came from Bill Jones’s River Glade Vineyard in Powhatan County, and they were harvested at about 19 degrees Brix. We divided the grapes into two separate batches.

Bill Jones (yellow shirt) and volunteer pickers on Chardonnay Day at River Glade Vineyard

The first of these I call the “Stainless” Chardonnay. These grapes were chilled in a refrigerator before crushing. The must was chaptalized (sugared) to 21 degrees Brix and total acidity was adjusted to 7.5 grams per liter. We used only free run juice for this batch. The wine was fermented with Lalvin’s 71B yeast at 55-60 degrees to produce a youthful, refreshing wine. The wine was sulfited early to 50ppm SO2 in order to prevent malolactic fermentation. This wine was racked off its gross lees early, and was also racked from the fine lees as soon as the wine cleared.

Batch #2 was our “Barrel Select” version. It included both free run and pressed juice. It was chaptalized to 22.5 degrees Brix and TA was adjusted to 6 g/l. The wine was fermented at ambient temperatures, with fermentation temperature peaking at about 85-90 degrees. A Burgundy yeast strain was used. To give a barrel-fermented character, we added lightly toasted American oak granules to the fermenter.

When primary fermentation was nearly complete, the wine was inoculated with a malolactic bacteria culture and nutrient. This wine was allowed to remain on its gross lees until MLF was complete, about 6 weeks total.. After racking, the fine lees were stirred weekly over a period of several months. Oak was added using both French and American medium-toast oak “beans” or cubes.

These wines are completely different, even though they were made from the same grapes, picked at the same time. They both clearly taste like Chardonnay, but batch #1 is a wine meant to wash down some spicy grilled shrimp, while batch#2 begs for rich, buttery-garlicky Chicken Kiev. So when you want to make Chardonnay, whether from kits or from fresh grapes, remember that you, the winemaker, are the one who has to choose and create the style you are looking for.

Virginia Wine Suggestion

Wow! Farfelu Vineyard’s ’03 Syrah is jam-packed with jammy blackberry flavors and aromas. This rich, full-bodied, dark-purple wine will satisfy your craving for big fruity red better than most Aussie Shirazes! Delicious, and age-worthy, too, but a bit pricey at about 22 bucks a bottle.

Comments? Questions? Write me at dan.mouer@verizon.net

Also, see: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CentralVirginiaWinemakers/