UNOAKED CHARDONNAY
Photo of Chardonnay grapes by Manuel Venturini on unsplash
Many reasons explain chardonnay’s ubiquity: the ease of raising its vines in sundry climates and soils, its association with the famed wines of Chablis and other great white Burgundies, and the way that it marries felicitously with oak. By and large, it is also simply a delicious quaff.
As it happens, chardonnay is a rather neutral grape; winemakers love playing with it because their tinkerings can deliver various flavors and aromas that they want stamped onto a wine. For example, using oak barrels to ferment and age chardonnay can deliver a wine with a creamy texture, scents of wood, spice or vanilla, or tastes of butter or caramel.
When a chardonnay is “unoaked” or “unwooded,” however, it stands naked in its bottle. Many winemakers choose to fashion such expressions of chardonnay, some by the traditions of their area, others with an eye to letting the grape simply strut its plainspoken stuff.
Unoaked chardonnay performs much like other major white wine grape varieties when they, too, are made unoaked (as, unlike chardonnay, they nearly always are). They are pure, clean expressions of the grape’s “fruit.”
Sauvignon blanc, for example, exhibits “green fruit” character: lime pith, gooseberry (admittedly, not a fruit common to Americans, but familiar with sauvignon blanc’s traditional markets of the U.K. and its former colonies), or of white grapefruit, and sometimes a “green” vegetal character.
Chenin blanc, you could say, shows “white fruit” character, tasting of apple flesh or slightly under-ripe pear or nectarine. Viognier is all “yellow fruit,” peaches and apricots; riesling, “white” and “citrus” both, a mix of green apple and lemon or lime, with riesling’s additional hints of minerals.
Chardonnay unoaked is a possible peacock; it may sport some or many of these wines’ same fruit characters (though rarely any of sauvignon blanc’s), depending on where it is grown and given other possible manipulations of it by the winemaker such as stirring up the spent yeast cells after fermentation or putting the unoaked chardonnay through ancillary fermentations to soften its acidity.
In the end, you might find aromas and flavors of green or yellow apple, citrus (especially various turns on lemon; the current vogue is for Meyer lemon), honeydew melon, pineapple and several other light yellow tropical fruits such as mango or passion fruit.
At the wine shop, you’ll know you’re in unwooded or unoaked chardonnay territory when you see those same names on the label. Sometimes wineries will use “metallic” monikers (such as “Silver”) to allude to the stainless steel fermenting vats used for unoaked chardonnay production and aging. You just might see the name “Naked” or “Virgin,” too.
Also, most chardonnays from northern Italy and Burgundy’s Mâcon and Chablis are, by tradition, unoaked. If wood is used at all, the wine is fermented or aged in what is called “neutral cooperage,” oak barrels used in years previous and leeched of any strong wood character they otherwise could donate to the wine that they house.
Pairing unoaked chardonnay with food requires an acquaintance with its oaked sibling. “Normal” wooded chardonnays, especially those with a slight residual sugar (an exceedingly common element in many New World chardonnays), pair well with dishes having some sweetness themselves, a chicken breast with a tropical fruit salsa, for instance, or rich, buttered lobster or crab. Lean, fresh, high acid unoaked chardonnay won’t be delicious with the same kinds of foods.
Unoaked chardonnay’s better food partners are those high in salt, low in sweetness and with moderate fat or oil. Plainly prepared fish and shellfish are obvious candidates.
Aged, firm cheeses marry well (for instance, Cheddar or Caerphilly; a great surprise is Chablis with Cantal or Beaufort). The “classic” match of crisp unoaked chardonnay with Brie isn’t as delicious as Brie with an off-dry sparkling wine.