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Tim's Ravings

Posted by Tim Stevens on

Chardonnay Here To Stay!!!

I appear to have recently lost a bottle of Grange to friend in a bet. He is yet to receive the wine; I have lawyered-up, to examine loopholes.

The bet (which, Your Honour, was not witnessed) was a friend trying to convince me that Sauvignon Blanc would topple Chardonnay as Australia’s top white. I do admit I was blinded by my love of the style of Chardonnay that’s fruity, crisp and flavoursome, like our well-pedigreed Barrel Fermented version at Huntington Estate.

At the time of the bet (alleged bet, Your Honour, and, I might add, without paperwork) five years ago, there were very few good Savy Blancs made in this country. As wine show judges,, we’d all moan if unlucky enough to be given this class; its wines were generally regarded as insipid, lacking in varietal characters and generally too sweet or over acidic.

Since then, spurred by the dramatic increase in popularity of Savy Blanc from Kiwi land, winemakers did their homework, found the right climates, the right techniques – in both the vineyard and winery – and produced some excellent wines.

As you know by now, us winemakers find it hard to walk and chew gum at the same time, so while we were concentrating on Savy Blanc, Chardy became our attention-deprived ‘middle child’. Many of us threw out the recipes that drove our Chardy export success of the past few decades and went off on some Burgundy-inspired kick – many picked the grapes greener, with acid levels too high and the fruit characters undeveloped.

Today, the result is a marketplace with too many Chardys that are neither ‘lean and elegant’ nor ‘sunshine in a bottle’, just wines that are too acidic and flavourless or overripe and unbalanced.

The sadly predictable result is that Savy Blanc has taken the crown. Whether this trend continues will depend on how winemakers react, particularly in terms of the style of Chardy we are making.

There are positives from all of this. Firstly, we are now making some really good Savy Blancs and this trend won’t go away. Secondly, there are those of us who never stopped making Chardys that are fruit-driven and flavoursome. As many of you will testify our Barrel Ferment ($19) and Unwooded ($15) Chardonnays have good fruit flavours and great palate weight without being too tight or too broad. They’re great drinks.

The final positive in all of this: I did naively purchases a few bottles of early ’80s Grange from from less than impressive vintages, and the ullages seem to have suffered. I’ve only got one left, and I had been wondering what to do with it…

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