The Greatest Chardonnay in the World (Part 1 - Rest of the World)

Being online wine moguls and all-round nice guys, we’re fortunate enough to get invited to a lot of cool shit, much of which we regretfully have to pass up, since being an online wine mogul also means a fair bit of real work. But when Con Simos from AWRI sends you an email inviting you to a "Wines of the World" tasting, you open the email. The Australian Wine Research Institute held their first tasting in this series a couple of years ago, themed “Wines of France”, and it was a wine experience not soon forgotten. So when I opened the email and saw the title “World Chardonnay and Pinot”, I cleared the calendar and RSVP’d faster than you can say “sorry Justin, I’m going to be busy on Friday”...

I don’t get to do a whole lot of “formal” tasting these days, and the exercise in itself is an interesting one. On the one hand, with its blind tasting, white desks and scorecards, it’s a bit like sitting for a high school exam. On the other hand, you’re tasting thousand-dollar Pinot (more on that later!), not solving complex equations.

So yes - there are certainly better environments in which to enjoy a wine, like sitting on a balcony overlooking Manly beach in summer sucking on a Margaret River Chardonnay. But there are few better opportunities to taste forty or so of the world’s best Chardonnays in one sitting, and to learn through sharing your notes and thoughts with some of the finest winemakers in the world.

Lord Iain Riggs, the Legend of Brokenwood, and Pinot King Tom Carson of Yabby Lake were presiding, with Con as host, and after a shot of Nespresso and some housekeeping rules, we were led into the stark, silent tasting room.

On my desk at booth 05b was a black plastic folder with a blank scorecard and tasting sheet, a 2B lead pencil, an eraser, a staedler sharpener (nice one, too, that went straight into the manbag), a black spittoon, and eleven glasses of Chardonnay from all around the world except Australia and Burgundy, France. Welcome to Bracket 1.

But first a few facts:

Chardonnay was the single most widely planted and sought-after grape in the world in the 80’s. Indeed, it wasn't just in this country that bought into it – Burgundy and Champagne in France, California, Chile, South Africa, Spain and even Moldova have thousands of hectares of Chardy plantings. It’s easy to grow and ripens well in most climates, which has probably seen it somewhat abused around the world, it’s fair to say.

Finesse, balance, length, flavour, and a sense of site – this is what we’re looking for in the best Chardonnays, and it was the general opinion of both Iain and Tom that behind Burgundy, Australia was now producing some of the best Chardonnay in the world.

Chardonnay flavours are all about the citrus and stone fruits – grapefruit and peaches, for instance, and should be less about the rich melon and tropical fruits. And it should be all about the purity of the fruit, not so much about the winemaker influences like oak or creamy, green apple malolactic fermentation. These processes should sit seamlessly in balance to let the flavours of the fruit shine.

There was some debate between our hosts over whether sulphides were a bad thing (you know that struck match smell in some Chardies, which I love? Seems those wines were rejected outright at a recent wineshow Tom was judging for - their loss, I say!). But all were in agreement that good Chardonnay was about fruit purity, finesse and balance, and length – wines that really linger in the mouth.

So what did we have on the table before me? We had some of the best representations from the US, Argentina, New Zealand, Italy, South Africa, and Cotes de Jura in France, ranging in vintage from 2012 to 2007.

We tasted them blind, by the way, meaning I didn’t know what the wines were until after I’d tasted them and written up my notes and scores, not that I was already three parts the way to drunk.

We used the traditional show-judging method of scoring out of twenty, and assigned each wine a Gold (18.5 - 20.0), Silver (17.0 – 18.0) or Bronze (15.5 – 16.5) medal, or zip for anything scoring under 15.0. Traditionally for this method you score out of 3 for colour, 7 for nose, and 10 for palate, but no one really does that anymore, they simply pick a score they think is worthy based on their overall impression of the wine.

So rules and regulations sorted, in I dove - swirling, smelling, sipping, swooshing and spitting my way through the eleven wines from around the world.

First cab off the rank got a gold, probably because I was so excited about having Chardonnay for breakfast. In fact I was pretty generous across a lot of the wines, giving out four golds, four silvers and three bronzes.

I genuinely liked most of them, though I can appreciate a good old school Chardy, and there were a few bigger, oakier styles in there which weren’t quite so appreciated by the experts in the room. More for me then.

The stand-outs by popular vote were the 2011 Craggy Range Les Beaux Cailloux Chardonnay from Hawkes Bay, NZ (really elegant, with nice length and distinct honey dew melon flavours) and the 2008 Hyde De Villaine ‘Hyde Vineyard’ Chardonnay from Carneros, US (also my personal favourite – stunning presence and power, pure grapefruit and pear flavours, little bit of butteriness, and a long, minerally finish).

In general, I don’t think the room was particularly blown away by this bracket, and I seemed alone in my love for buttered popcorn. There was diversity, which you'd expect from wines from around the world, but I guess I got a sense of what they mean when they say "New World". Looking at this bracket compared with the Australian and Burgundy brackets, you'd definitely say these were leaning more towards the old school style of heavier oak and richness.

So Riggsy and Tom weren't handing out a lot of bling, but their moods brightened considerably as we moved on to the Australian bracket… (to be continued)