25 Facts About Chardonnay

For new and developing wine regions, growing Chardonnay is seen as a 'rite of passage' and an easy entry into the international wine market.

In cool climates, Chardonnay wine tends to be medium to light body with noticeable acidity and flavors of green plum, apple, and pear.

Chardonnay is an important component of many sparkling wines around the world, including Champagne and Franciacorta in Italy.

Chardonnay has a wide-ranging reputation for relative ease of cultivation and ability to adapt to different conditions.

Some viticultural hazards include the risk of damage from springtime frost, as Chardonnay is an early-budding vine – usually a week after Pinot noir.

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In Burgundy, the amount of limestone to which the Chardonnay vines are exposed seems to have some effect on the resulting wine.

In contrast, South African Chardonnay produced from more sandstone-based vineyards tend to be richer and more weighty.

Chardonnay can be found in Appellation d'origine controlee wines of the Loire Valley and Jura wine region, as well as the vin de pays wines of the Languedoc.

Chardonnay was believed to be first planted in Chablis by the Cistercians at Pontigny Abbey in the 12th century.

Every year since 1991, Chardonnay production is celebrated in Limoux during the Toques et Clochers festival.

In North America, particularly California, Chardonnay found another region where it could thrive and produce a style of wine noticeably different from that of France.

In Canada, Chardonnay is found in British Columbia, Nova Scotia, Ontario, and Quebec.

Chardonnay's success encouraged other Californian winemakers to follow suit and culminated in Chateau Montelena's victory over Burgundy Chardonnay in the 1976 blind tasting event conducted by French judges known as the Judgment of Paris.

In Canada, Chardonnay has seen some success with rich, oaky styles produced in Ontario and lighter styles produced in Quebec and British Columbia.

In 2009, Le Clos Jordanne winery, of Jordan Village on the Niagara Peninsula, Ontario, received critical acclaim for its 2005 Claystone Terrace Chardonnay, which won the top spot for Chardonnay in the "Judgement of Montreal" experts' tasting.

Besides Pinot bianco, Chardonnay can be found in blends with Albana, Catarratto, Cortese, Erbaluce, Favorita, Garganega, Grecanico, Incrocio Manzoni, Nuragus, Procanico, Ribolla Gialla, Verdeca, Vermentino and Viognier.

Chardonnay is found in the Valle d'Aosta DOC and Friuli-Venezia Giulia wine region.

Outside of the regions discussed above, Chardonnay can be found in cooler climate sites in Italy, Greece, Israel and Lebanon as well as Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, England, Georgia, Germany, Slovakia, Hungary, Macedonia, Moldova, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Spain, Serbia, Switzerland and Ukraine.

In Switzerland, Chardonnay is found mostly around Bundner Herrschaft, Geneva and Valais.

In Spain, Chardonnay has been increasingly used in the sparkling wine Cava.

The Portuguese experimentation with Chardonnay has been mostly influenced by flying winemakers from Australia and the examples produced so far are very New World in style.

Chardonnay lends itself to almost any style of wine making from dry still wines, to sparkling wines to sweet late harvest and even botrytized wines .

One Burgundian winemaker that favors the use of only wild yeast is Domaine des Comtes Lafon which had the fermentation of its 1963 Chardonnay batch take 5 years to complete when the fermentation process normally only takes a matter of weeks.

In cooler climates, the extract and acidity of Chardonnay is magnified which has the potential of producing very concentrated wines that can develop through bottle aging.

Chardonnay became very fashionable in the 1990s, as the stereotypical drink of young urban women of the Bridget Jones generation.

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