Light Chardonnay Wines

Most Chardonnay is fermented dry.

Like any variety, it can be made still or sparkling. Chardonnay has a special affinity for both options here, making some of the most expensive dry white wines and sparkling wines in the world. It’s planted very widely too, so whilst you could drop 10k on a bottle, you can also pick up an excellent Chardonnay for twenty bucks. What a sh!t show Chardonnay!

Yep, you can drink old anything! If you want to try old Chardy, the trick is to buy a case and drink a bottle a year. When it is tasting awesome, drink the rest of the case fairly quickly. Riesling and Semillon make the most age worthy dry white wines but good Chardy will improve too, generally not for as long though.

Somewhere in between – the colder you serve a wine the less aromatic it is... which means your olfactories have less information to work with when telling your brain what it is tasting. Grab a bottle, chill it hard, open and drink it over a few hours... you’ll likely find it tight and steely, perhaps even hard to begin with. As it opens, the wine will relax, aromas and flavours will become more obvious, the palate less hard. You’ll pretty quickly dial in on the right temp for you!

Unoaked Chardonnay is generally fermented in stainless steel and then bottled. Oaked Chardonnay may be fermented in steel or oak and is then aged for a period in oak to build structure and flavour. While in oak the wine may be ‘lees stirred’ whereby the yeast cells that collect on the bottom of the barrel are pushed back through the wine, perhaps once a fortnight or a month. This has a preservative effect and increases richness. Over time this imparts bready, cheesy and biscuity notes to the wine. Most high quality Chardonnay is oak aged. The wines of Chablis form a notable exception – many are made without oak influence because the fruit carries enough tingly acidity, minerality and chalkiness to have power and personality without the inclusion of oak.

Click here to read a little more about Chardy.