A few weeks ago in Chardonnay – from buttery to steely I wrote about the dramatic weight loss evident in so many current examples of the world’s most popular white-wine grape Chardonnay. The comments section on ft.com attracted a record number of posts, many of them expressing a preference for the old, richer style of Chardonnay and seeking recommendations.
As a result I thought I would devote this last column before my summer break from the FT to some concrete suggestions from me and my colleagues on JancisRobinson.com.
It’s hard to generalise as so many wine regions now produce mainly leaner Chardonnays plus a minority of the richer sort but I’d suggest that California is good hunting ground for those who find the predominant modern style too tart. Avoid the cool Sonoma Coast (see this World Atlas of Wine map) and the chilliest appellations in Santa Barbara County such as Sta. Rita Hills and Santa Maria Valley. But many a Chardonnay from warmer parts of the state could fit the bill. I’m thinking of much of Russian River Valley, Alexander Valley, Sonoma Valley, Napa Valley and now, thanks to global warming, Carneros just north of San Francisco Bay, once considered relatively cool.
I asked Edwina Watson, wine buyer at Fortnum & Mason in London, to recommend a richer Chardonnay and she immediately suggested Varner’s Foxglove 2019 Central Coast bottling, which seems to be unusually widely and inexpensively available in the UK for a California Chardonnay. The nose is toasty and welcoming, there is broad fruit on the palate, and yet it’s still impressively fresh for a six-year-old wine.
Joey Tensley’s Fundamental range is also designed to ‘over-deliver at every level’. I thought the 2021 Chardonnay, apparently all Santa Barbara fruit, presumably from warmer, less fashionable parts of the county, was exceptionally good value, and more satisfying than the 2022.
The Ramey family in Sonoma make much more sophisticated Chardonnays from a range of different sources. The Rochioli Vineyard and Woolsey Road bottlings, both from warmer parts of the Russian River Valley, would be a treat for those hankering after wines with a hint of the buttery Meursaults of yore. Berry Bros & Rudd have cases of mature vintages available in bond. The regular 2022 from Russian River Valley is a less expensive alternative available by the bottle.
My colleague and fellow Master of Wine Andy Howard suggests Duckhorn’s 2023 Napa Chardonnay, not least because, now that Duckhorn is such a big company, the 2022 and 2023 are available at various branches of Majestic.
The Napa Chardonnays that spring to my mind as rich and gorgeous whenever I’ve tasted them are Kongsgaard’s. Small quantities of the 2021 and 2022 are available in the UK from Roberson, but they’re not cheap. Nowadays it’s my US colleague Samantha Cole-Johnson who has the pleasure of tasting them.
Another colleague, Master of Wine Julia Harding, points out that there are lots of richer Chardonnays produced in Margaret River in Western Australia ‘because they have high natural acidity to balance and so didn’t ever really need to go lean in order to be refreshing’. Her favourites in a recent tasting of fairly oaky young wines included biodynamic Cullen’s Kevin John 2023 bottling and the 2020 vintage of the classic Leeuwin Estate Art Series. I particularly enjoyed this vintage of one of Australia’s most lauded Chardonnays, too.
Vasse Felix is a very reliable Margaret River producer and their special Heytesbury bottling, recommended specifically by my colleague Ben Colvill, has a certain richness.
I have long championed New Zealand Chardonnay, which is always enlivened by a certain amount of acidity. Neudorf Chardonnays, from the often-overlooked Nelson wine region in the north-west of the South Island, are always a pleasure. Of the superlative single-vineyard Chardonnays of Kumeu River, those from the Coddington vineyard are always the richest, although the Estate bottling is even better value.
It is significant that when the Brajkovich family of Kumeu River felt that urban development in their Kumeu suburb of Auckland was such that they needed to look for an alternative source of fruit, they turned to Hawke’s Bay on the east coast of the North Island, where they are now busy establishing their Rays Road vineyard.
Hawke’s Bay has long been recognised as growing satisfyingly ripe Chardonnay. I was impressed by a recent tasting of a dozen selected 2023s (which tasted as though they had been picked before the arrival of Cyclone Gabrielle) but can’t find any of them outside New Zealand yet. I can recommend Trinity Hill’s 125 bottlings, however, and managed to find a UK retailer of the mouth-filling 2021.
To make a rich Chardonnay you generally need a certain amount of sunshine. The foothills of the Andes in Argentina have unpolluted sunlight in abundance and there are a couple of particularly obvious candidates from there, although they are far from the only ones. The prevalent clone of Chardonnay in Argentina seems to produce wines with the same sort of glamour as a really good, powerful California Chardonnay but at a much lower price. Catena Alta Chardonnay is extremely reliable (a definite notch above Catena Chardonnay), and Julia Harding MW was particularly impressed by Zuccardi’s Poligonos 2021.
South Africa’s finest Chardonnays, like those of New Zealand, generally have perceptible freshness, but richer than most are Hamilton Russell’s 2023 and Neil Ellis’s 2022 Whitehall bottling.
Southern Europe is not famous for Chardonnay but if there were ever an obvious wine to deliver the sort of breadth and hum of an old-fashioned Meursault it is Batàr from the Chianti Classico estate Querciabella. It’s not cheap, contains a lot of Pinot Blanc too, but it is extremely and consistently satisfying.
I tasted several Chardonnays from the portfolio of the dominant Catalan wine producer Familia Torres the other day, and thought the relatively rich 2023 Vinya Gigi bottling of wine from a vineyard planted by Beverly Hills restaurateur Jean León in 1967, when Chardonnay must have been extremely rare in Spain, would make a good candidate for this collection. I couldn’t find a UK stockist but it seems widely available in continental Europe for as little as €20. Too cheap for a wine devised by a man with the extraordinary history related on the Jean León website. Just one of many small details: he recounted delivering pasta, probably the dish he created especially for Marilyn Monroe, to her and Robert Kennedy on her last night on earth.
Few wine lovers anywhere will believe that I have a rich Chardonnay candidate from an English wine producer but it’s true. Pioneers of top-quality English still wine Danbury Ridge in Essex have consistently produced notably rich Chardonnay, from their debut vintage in 2018 onwards – so rich that it needs quite a bit of time in bottle to show its best. The 2021 is probably the best vintage to drink now even though the broader 2022 has already been released.
Of course the most obvious place to look for Chardonnay is Burgundy but now that so many Côte d’Or examples seem to be on weight loss drugs, it is more and more fruitful to look south of the Côte d’Or, especially in the warmer Mâconnais. The Chardonnays in appellations such as St-Véran, Viré-Clessé and those with the words Mâcon or Pouilly in their names (though not the Loire’s Pouilly-Fumé) should provide fertile hunting ground. The whites taste fuller, sunnier, fatter than those of the Côte d’Or even if they rarely have the same savour and backbone.
I searched our database for Mâconnais Chardonnays in which the word ‘rich’ featured in my tasting note and two names kept coming up: Verget, the négociant business of the quirky, ultra-fastidious Jean-Marie Guffens, whose wines can easily outlast their Côte d’Or counterparts, and biodynamic La Soufrandière run by the Bret brothers (who interned at Verget). Verget wines are sold by the case in the UK by Farr Vintners from just £150 a dozen in bond, while Berry Bros & Rudd import those of La Soufrandière and their associated Bret Brothers project. All these are wines with both richness and freshness.
In June I was lucky enough to attend the 200th anniversary celebrations of the Faiveley family in Nuits-St-Georges. I did make a note that their 2015 Corton-Charlemagne would fit the bill superbly, but it looks from Wine-Searcher’s listings as though you will have to give Eldorado Consultim of Paris €228 to secure a bottle.
Richer Chardonnays to buy
Florent Rouve, Vieilles Vignes 2023 Viré-Clessé 13.5%
£18 Marks & Spencer
Varner, Foxglove Chardonnay 2019 Central Coast 14%
£21 Uncorked and many more
Joey Tensley, Fundamental Chardonnay 2021 Central Coast 13.5%
£22.74 Four Walls Wine Company, £23 Woodwinters
Kumeu River, Estate Chardonnay 2022 Kumeu 13%
£24.50 Drinks Direct and many more
Zuccardi, Polígonos San Pablo Chardonnay 2021 Uco Valley 13%
£24.65 The Oxford Wine Co
Catena Alta, Historic Rows Chardonnay 2022 Mendoza 13%
£29 for a single bottle Majestic
Neil Ellis, Whitehall Chardonnay 2022 Elgin 12.5%
£30 Averys Wine Merchants
Hamilton Russell Chardonnay 2023 Hemel-en-Aarde Valley 13.2%
£32.95 Divine Fine Wines
La Soufrandière, La Combe Desroches 2023 St-Véran 13%
£33 Berry Bros & Rudd
Kumeu River, Coddington Chardonnay 2022 Kumeu 13.5%
£35.90 One More Wine Shop and many more
Danbury Ridge Chardonnay 2022 England 13.5%
£37.99 Cambridge Wine Merchants
Neudorf, Rosie’s Block Amphora Chardonnay 2023 Nelson 13.5%
£233.78 per case of 6 Great Wines Direct
Duckhorn Chardonnay 2022 and 2023 Napa Valley 14.1%
£46 for a single bottle Majestic
Trinity Hill, Gimblett Gravels 125 Chardonnay 2021 Hawke’s Bay 14%
£298.95 per case of 6 The Fine Wine Company
Vasse Felix, Heytesbury Chardonnay 2022 Margaret River 13%
£56 The Wine Society
Ramey Chardonnay 2022 Russian River Valley 13.5%
£63 Berry Bros & Rudd
Leeuwin Estate, Art Series Chardonnay 2020 Margaret River 13.5%
£74.75 One More Wine Shop
Querciabella, Batàr 2022 IGT Toscana 14%
£97.90 Hedonism
Ramey, Woolsey Road Chardonnay 2022 Russian River Valley 14.5%
£318 per case of 6 in bond Uncorked
Cullen, Kevin John Chardonnay 2023 Margaret River 13.5%
£108 VINVM
Kongsgaard Chardonnay 2021 Napa Valley 14%
£169 Roberson Wine
For tasting notes, scores and suggested drinking dates, see our tasting notes database. For international stockists, see Wine-Searcher.com.
Back to basics
| What makes a richer Chardonnay? |
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Virtually all decent, broad-beamed Chardonnays have been aged in oak, though don’t necessarily taste of oak. And they have real concentration of flavour, which generally means fully ripe grapes, so they were grown somewhere relatively warm with generous sunlight. It’s very rare to find a rich Chardonnay with less than 13% alcohol and some will have 14.5%.
These wines will be the opposite of what is sometimes described as ‘Chablis style’, typically with a relatively high acid level, and having seen no oak. Such wines may be described as ‘mineral’ whereas a richer Chardonnay is probably noticeably fruity. But richer Chardonnays won’t necessarily have any sweetness analytically, just give an impression of richness because of their relatively low acidity.
If the acidity is too low, as it can be in hot climates, the wine will fail to be refreshing – the first duty of any wine. In winespeak we call such wines ‘flabby’. To combat this in warmer climates, growers may pick the grapes before they are fully ripe when acid levels are reasonably high, but before the flavour compounds have developed properly. But that will mean that the resulting wines will be rather vapid and unsatisfying. (There’s currently another reason for doing this for wines destined for the UK now that duty is imposed according to alcoholic content. This, rather than a concern for consumers’ health, usually explains the obvious reduction in strength of certain brands currently.) |
