June 23, 2004
More Summer QuaffsAdmittedly, chardonnay grapes produce great white wine. Many winemakers would argue chardonnay produces the greatest white wine in the world. From Burgundy in France, to here in California, especially in the cooler growing regions like Santa Rita Hills and the Santa Maria Valley, great chardonnay is a treasure.
The trouble, however, rests in the "copycat" nature of most enterprises in American culture. It was twenty-some years ago that Au Bon Climat, Qupe, Sanford, all from Santa Barbara County, and Chalone from Monterey County, were revolutionizing winemaking in the United States producing full barrel-fermented, 100 percent malolactic chardonnays in the style of the great white wines of Burgundy in France.
Malolactic refers to "secondary fermentation" in both white and red wine. This process, not really fermentation by the way, is a bacterial conversion where the tart malic acid in the wine is converted to the softer lactic acid found in dairy products. Malic acid is the acid of green apples. Malolactic typically softens the wine, imparting additional complexity and finesse.
With the "monkey see-monkey do" copycat phenomena, most wineries have felt compelled to make chardonnay and the consumer is confronted by a plethora of chardonnay on the shelf-most of it quite undistinguished, some of it even quite dreadful.
Growers, of course, with avarice in mind, jumped on the bandwagon and planted vineyard after vineyard in chardonnay to "cash in on the big bucks." Overproduction and oceans of mediocre chardonnay wine has caused the price of chardonnay to plummet. Now, except for quality-minded growers, vineyard owners are crying the blues, ripping out the chardonnay, and wondering what the next "in" variety will be to plant.
Unlike other varietals like muscat, sauvignon blanc, riesling and malvasia bianca, the chardonnay grape is rather bland in both its taste and aromatics. The greatness of chardonnay wine, therefore, always comes from the winemaking art-the use of barrel ageing and oak cooperage.
Palmina has just released its 2003 Malvasia Bianca, a great variety with roots in Italy and probably brought into the "boot" by the Romans from ancient Greece. Highly aromatic, unlike chardonnay, this grape makes a stylish wine, both as a dry wine and as a sweet dessert wine.
Dave Robinson who produces Palmina"s website wrote me:
The Malvasia Bianca must be Palmina's labor of love, although nothing Palmina does could be said to be the easy route. Steve and Chrystal Clifton pick it themselves overnight in the Larner vineyard. About 25% of the grapes are set out on racks, under a roof, with fans to aid the wind. They're dried for a month or so, and then vinified separately. About 10% of the final wine made up of this intense stuff. The result is an incredible aroma - it smells like honey from bees that have fed on orange blossom and is so intense that you expect the wine to be sweet, although of course, it's bone dry. Our plumeria has just started blooming, so we were able to compare the smells, and the wine is almost identical.
This wine sells for about $22.
Other noteworthy summertime quaffs include Fiddlehead Cellars sauvignon blanc which also sells for about $22. Fiddlehead's exquisite "Honeysuckle," a wine I refer to as a reserve sauvignon blanc, sells for about $32. And yes, for classic chardonnay, the Qupe 2001 Reserve chardonnay, Block 11 Bien Nacido Vineyard grown in the Santa Maria Valley is about as good as chardonnay gets! It retails for about $25.
Wine lover and Santa Maria Times Wine columnist, Bob Senn, lives in the bucolic Los Alamos Valley and owns the Los Olivos Wine & Spirits Emporium.
