Wine lover: A Chardonnay for everyone

Chardonnay is a heck of a grape. It can be made into a buttery, full-bodied, creamy fruit bomb, or it can be made into a pristine, light-bodied, mineral-driven Burgundy. The amazing thing is that both of these styles are widely accepted and mass-produced.
Chardonnay thrives in just about every wine-growing region in the world, and Santa Cruz is no exception.
In Santa Cruz, as well as many other parts of California, chardonnay is the principal white grape and is planted far more than any other white varietal. In California, we typically make a bigger, more buttery style of chardonnay, although that trend is starting to change. It is becoming more common to walk into a Santa Cruz tasting room and hear one of the staff assert that theirs is a “more old-world-style Chardonnay.”
What they are saying is that the winemaker is trying to mimic the styles and techniques used in Burgundy, a place where chardonnay has been the white varietal king for a very long time.
The nice thing for winemakers is that the old-world style might be easier to accomplish than the butter-ball chardonnays we Californians are used to. The big buttery chardonnays that seem to be slowly losing popularity are made with lots of new oak and are sometimes harvested at an extra ripeness. They also go through a secondary fermentation, called malolactic fermentation, which makes the acids in the wine creamier and less intense.
The old-world style calls for less interference from the wine maker. The chardonnay receives less oak (if any), is usually lower in alcohol, and may or may not go through malolactic fermentation. The idea with the old-world style is to let the soil and the grapes show their true colors; a winemaker might describe it as “putting the region and its terroir on display through the medium of wine.” A nice way to see the comparison is to buy a bottle of Burgundy and a bottle of buttery California chardonnay and try both side by side. They will be so drastically different, it will be almost impossible to believe that both wines are made from the same grape.
Always remember that no matter what the current style or trend may be, the right style of wine to drink is the kind you enjoy the most. Some haughty people will say that one style is more “sophisticated” than another. These people are wine snobs, and their opinions are pitiable.
I will say, though, that it is a lot of fun to expand your horizons when trying wine, and that trying wines from around the world is usually educational and sometimes (when you’re lucky) mind-blowing.
Happy holidays!
Austin Twohig is a certified sommelier and partner in The Santa Cruz Experience, which conducts winery tours in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Contact him at au****@th********************.com.