California Chardonnay has gotten a bad wrap in a lot of circles over the past decade or so. Big, oaky butter bombs commercially marketed had a large following in their hay day, but today we see a different ball game. Winemakers in Santa Barbara are recreating the varietal’s identity on the market, producing wines in a much lighter style with an emphasis on striking acidity.
The amount of people that come into the tasting room and ask to skip over the Santa Barbara County Chardonnay on the list because they don’t like Chardonnay, is quite astonishing. More astonishing though is their reaction if they are coaxed into trying it. I seen pleasant surprises and questionable looks about the identity of this crisp, easy drinking white. Our winemaker produces a few different styles of Chardonnay, with our largest production wine (by far) being our Santa Barbara County Chardonnay ($15). This wine sees both oak and stainless steel fermentation and aging prior to blending the two and bottling, creating a lighter wine and allowing the fruit to shine through.
The New York Times recently posted an article titled “California Chardonnay Grow Up.” Discussions on the “palpable sense of experimentation” that Santa Barbara winemakers are using take readers through the grape’s journey over the recent years.
IT’S hard to feel neutral about California chardonnay. The wine’s almost effortless popularity as a mass-market white also brought it the mark of infamy. For every dozen people who unthinkingly asked for a chardonnay when they really meant any white wine, there were always a few who cried out that they’d take anything but chardonnay.
These chardonnay haters made their feelings felt. While most winemakers are loath to admit that they hold a finger up to the wind, many producers have clearly dialed back on the extremes of the California style that dominated 10 years ago.
The big buttered-popcorn fruity extravaganzas are, of course, still out there. But today far more California chardonnays are made in a much wider range of styles, from crisp, lively and lip-smacking to rich, powerful and structured, with variations of all types and sizes.
Santa Barbara County offers a sort of microcosm of California as a whole. With around 7,200 acres of chardonnay planted in 2007, according to the Agriculture Department, Santa Barbara is not nearly the region with the most chardonnay. Sonoma, Monterey and San Joaquin in the Central Valley each have around twice as many acres of chardonnay as does Santa Barbara.
But it’s hard to imagine any region outdoing Santa Barbara for the sheer variety of chardonnay styles it offers…
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Joanie Hudson, Assistant Tasting Room Manager, Santa Barbara Winery
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