Tuesday, May. 01, 2001

Chablis, chablis and chardonnay

By Ken Robertson

Q. What’s the difference between Chablis and chardonnay?

A. Let’s sort out three names here: Chablis, chablis and chardonnay.

First of all, Chablis with a capital C must come from its namesake region in France, which is in northern Burgundy.

The primary grape grown in Chablis is chardonnay, but the region also makes its white and red wines from pinot noir, pinot blanc, pinot gris, pinot liebault, sauvignon blanc, gamay, cesar, tressot, sacy, aligote and melon de Bourgogne, according to The Sotheby’s New Wine Encyclopedia.

Traditionally, Chablis is a clear, pale color with a green tinge around the rim, a steely, direct, high-acid wine that takes several years to soften. The best mature into wines of great finesse.

In more recent times, Chablis has created many wines that go through malolactic fermentation, which softens that edge and creates “fuller, softer and rounder” wines, according to Sotheby’s. Malolactic fermentation (or ML) is a secondary fermentation that converts harsher malic acids to softer lactic acids. Not all wines are put through ML, though many in the Northwest are.

The region’s best wines lean to one style or the other, with the malolactic wines often seeing rather new oak barrels, while their high-acid kin age in stainless steel. Impatient American tastes are more likely to embrace the oaky, in my experience, and this style is similar to what one is likely to encounter in American chardonnays, especially from California and even in the Northwest a decade ago.

Second, you can generally dismiss chablis without a capital C. It’s virtually always a rather bland wine splashed together from a mix of white grapes that give it little character or dignity. And if France had its way, lower-case and lower-class chablis would perish from the world’s vocabulary.

Wine labeled chardonnay must be largely made from that specific grape, although standards vary widely around the world and you might get fooled once in a while. Some areas of the world only require 50.1 percent chardonnay to slap that label on a bottle. Washington and Idaho require 75 percent; Oregon is even stricter at 90 percent.

The ascendance of California chardonnay and then Washington and Oregon chardonnay seems to have prompted the French to add this prestigious variety’s name to many of its whites that contain chardonnay. Chablis and other French regions that grow chardonnay — as well as other areas of the world — have followed this trend.

So, you may get chardonnay from almost anywhere grapes are grown — much of the United States, France, Italy, Chile, New Zealand or Australia. And the style can vary greatly, no matter its country of origin.

Our Northwest chardonnays, for example, often mimic the acid of Chablis, which California generally cannot. But some Northwest chardonnays still are oaky, buttery wines that usually offer a brief life span. Be leery of aging a chardonnay past three to five years, unless you know it well.

Q. I’m new at tasting wines. Wineries have so many choices to try. Which wines should I start and end with?

A. Tradition says start with the bone-dry whites, work into the softer and sweeter whites, switch to the lighter reds, then work toward the “big” reds, such as cabernet and merlot, and conclude with dessert wines.

For novice tasters, that’s usually a tall order. First of all, bone-dry whites are hard to love if you’re new to wine, unless you have food to provide a context for them. Taste them sparingly, unless you really enjoy them already, then move to the more accessible.

Don’t take this advice as a warning to avoid dry whites such as semillon and sauvignon blanc. They are among my favorite whites, but they really show their appeal with foods such as fish and chicken, especially if you are still learning the ropes.

And don’t let the snobbery of chardonnay keep you from the Northwest’s other fine whites. Yes, chardonnay is great, but folks often become so busy with making sure they know all the nuances of chardonnay that they miss out on some other delightful wines.

Excellent chenin blanc, riesling and gewürztraminer made in a softer style all offer stunning floral and fruit flavors that are especially rewarding to novice tasters. The Northwest made its first splash in worldwide wine circles with its outstanding riesling from Chateau Ste. Michelle in the early 1970s. That winery’s riesling remains an excellent value of highly consistent quality. In the 25-plus years since, a host of other Northwest wineries have produced rieslings of equal quality, frequently for $6 to $8 a bottle.

Among the reds, don’t immediately migrate to pricey merlot, pinot noir, cabernet sauvignon or the newly trendy syrah. You might miss out on a gold medal lemberger for $10. So do a little research on the wineries you’ll be visiting. Certainly, you ought to taste the wines on which they’ve built their reputations. And also ask the folks in the tasting room what they’ve really been taken with recently. You’ll find some great surprises.

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