Immaculate-looking vines, here in the Quintessa Vineyard, near Rutherford in the Napa Valley, California with Mount St Helena looming in the distance. Most of the classic French grape varieties are grown in California and recent replantings have done much to match varieties to the most suitable locations. This vineyard grows the red Bordeaux varieties of Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and Merlot and the end result is a rich, complex and concentrated wine.
The A–Z section from here to here covers entries on grape varieties from all over the world.
The symbols after each heading indicate whether the grape is dark-skinned 
, usually for making red or rosé wine, or light-skinned 
, usually for making white wine. If you cannot find the grape variety you want in the A–Z, it may be described under another synonym, so try the Index of Grape Names and Their Synonyms on here.
The A–Z section contains special features on 17 of the world’s great classic grape varieties, along with information on geography, including a world map locating major plantings, history, viticulture and vinification, finding the grape around the world and enjoying the grape. A Consumer Information box with Best producers and Recommended wines, and Maturity charts with advice on when to drink various wines, complete each special feature.
In addition to the classic grapes, the A–Z contains two-page features on a further 15 major varieties. Best producers have been given for all the classic and major grapes and, where appropriate, also for other minor A–Z entries.
Tannic, low-acid grape of southwest France, found in a few lesser wines. It’s on the way out, and won’t be much missed.
Greece’s most widely planted red variety makes everything from rosés to dense, ageable reds, and even occasionally sweet wines from sun-dried grapes. Its tendency to overcrop needs to be controlled, it is susceptible to disease and it needs a long growing season to ripen its tannins. And, as one might guess, it provides a ready home for viruses. Its cultivation is centred on the Peloponnese, where it is the sole grape in the gutsy, spicy, ripe, plum-tasting wines of Nemea. Here it is cultivated at between 250 and 800m (820 and 2600ft), with the longest-living wines coming from the slopes of the high plateau of Asprokambos; elsewhere the grape’s low acidity can limit its wines’ longevity. But it has good fruit and colour, blends well with Cabernet Sauvignon, and on its own can also make attractive rosés. It is also known as Mavro Nemeas. Best producers: (Greece) Antonopoulos, Boutari, Gaia, Skouras.
This grape now seems to have originated in Italy, where it is first mentioned around 1520. It is found mainly in Campania (especially in the provinces of Benevento and Avellino) and Basilicata (especially in Potenza and Matera). Calabria, Puglia and the island of Procida, off the Neapolitan coast, also grow some.
Its most prestigious wine is Aglianico del Vulture in Basilicata. The production zone is centred on Mount Vulture, and vines are grown at between 450 to 600m (1500 and 2000ft); soils are volcanic, though more recently planted areas have more clay. Quality is generally good, and rising, and Taurasi in Campania also produces examples worth buying.
The weighty, concentrated, berried, sometimes smoky flavours of the wine, and its good acidity in warm climates, have attracted interest from the warmer parts of Australia, as well as in McLaren Vale and the cooler Margaret River. There is also some in California. It is early budding and rather late ripening, and favours a dry, sunny climate. Best producers: (Italy) Basilium, Antonio Caggiano, D’Angelo, D’Antiche Terre, De Conciliis, Di Majo Norante, Feudi di San Gregorio, Galardi, Le Querce, Mastroberardino, Montevetrano, Cantina del Notaio, Paternoster, Rivera, Sasso, Giovanni Struzziero, Terredora, Villa Matilde; (USA) Seghesio.
Aglianico vines on the slopes of Monte Vulture, Basilicata in southern Italy. Aglianico is suddenly one of the most fashionable grapes of a newly fashionable region: look for it on a label near you soon. Alternatively, look for it on an Australian label.
This Greek grape grows on Santorini and other islands: it is attractively floral-scented and generally used for blending. There is also a black Aidani Mavro, some of which is used for the local sweet dried-grape wines. Best producers (white): Koutsoyiannopoulos.
Airén is the major white grape of the vast La Mancha region in central Spain, and the low density of planting there – usually between 1200–1600 vines per hectare – means that the region has long held the title of largest area planted to one variety in the world. But that is changing as fashion turns towards red grapes.
Prices for red grapes are three times or more those for Airén, and that differential is especially painful given the huge investments made in state-of-the-art equipment for Airén. (As one consultant winemaker puts it, ‘the tartaric acid bills are very high in La Mancha’.) Reds can earn it back; Airén can’t. A lot has been uprooted, and a lot more will be.
Ironically, the wine has never been so good. The grapes’ thick skins and reasonably generous yields (even with irrigation yields seldom reach the legal limit of 85 hectolitres per hectare, but at such low density that is still quite a lot of wine per vine) make it ideal for this region of extremes of heat and cold. The full weight of modern technology gets thrown at it, and the wines are faultlessly made, utterly clean and fresh – but usually have no character whatever. That’s why they have been unable to command any price premium. You can’t dislike them, but there’s no real reason to buy them unless they’re cheap.
A large part of La Mancha’s production of Airén is distilled, and much eventually finds its way to Jerez for brandy, and into port as fortifying spirit. Some is blended with red wine to make light-coloured reds at low prices – La Mancha is one of the few DO (or equivalent) regions able to do this under EU law. And aficionados of traditional methods will be glad to know that some is still made in the old yellow, oxidized way for the local market. Best producers: (Spain) Ayuso, Vinícola de Castilla, Rodriguez y Berger.
An all-too-often unexciting Italian grape, given ideas way above its station by the granting of DOCG status to Albana di Romagna in 1987. The reasons usually given for this promotion are political and pragmatic: the authorities wanted a white DOCG, and the other possibilities were out of the question. The best Albana is exotically aromatic, with honeyed, soft fruit; too many examples, though, lack aroma and settle for being merely correctly made. Albana can be dry, off-dry, sweet or passito, and the latter two, though accounting for a very small proportion of production, can be the most interesting. Raisined grapes or, sometimes, nobly rotten ones are used, and there is some experimentation with barrique aging.
Plantings are concentrated in Emilia-Romagna in central Italy. The vine yields generously and is quite fussy: it needs good rainfall but is susceptible to grey rot in damp conditions. The most commonly planted clone, Albana Gentile di Bertinoro, has thicker skins which offer some protection against rot, and give quite deep-coloured wines: some authorities consider it a separate variety because of its smaller bunches and lower propensity to produce masses of vegetation. It is either the parent or the offspring of Garganega. Best producers: (Italy) Celli, Umberto Cesari, Leone Conti, Stefano Ferrucci, Fattoria Paradiso, Tre Monti, Uccellina, Zerbina.
See here.
Italian grape found in Liguria and used both for somewhat neutral wine and for the table. As a wine grape in Cinqueterre and La Spezia, it is blended with other grapes.
There are several Albillo vines in Spain, and DO regulations do not differentiate between them. Albillo de Albacete, aka Albilla de Manchuela, is from Manchuela; Albillo Mayor is from Ribera del Duero and makes aromatic, full-bodied wines that are low in acidity and usually blended, often with Macabeo. Albillo Real is from Valladolid and likewise makes aromatic, low-acidity wines. Other Albillo vines may be different vines again, or may be Chasselas or Verdejo or something else entirely under an alias. Best producers: (Spain) Dehesa de los Canonigos.
Sweet, scented red Aleatico is, at its best, an appealing dessert wine. It is either a parent or offspring of Muscat Blanc à Petits Grains, and shares the same heady aroma of roses. It is found in Italy in Lazio, Puglia, southern Tuscany, including the island of Elba, and on the French island of Corsica. It is also found in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, and to a very small extent in Chile. It has a rare white form, Aleatico Bianco, which is less fertile than standard white Muscat. Best producers: (Italy) Avignonesi, Francesco Candido.
Interesting Portuguese grape found in Dão and Bairrada, and further south in the Alentejo and Terras do Sado. It is thought to have originated in the Dão or Alentejo. It is susceptible to rot, but gives wines with good colour and blackberry and spice flavours and soft tannins. Its name in the Dão is Pé de Rato, or ‘mouse paw’ – either because of the Portuguese passion for naming grapes for animal references (see Esgaña Cão, Periquita, Rabo de Ovelha) or perhaps because of unusual local food and wine matches. Best producers: (Portugal) Caves Aliança, Quinta dos Roques, Sogrape.
Actually more than one grape, but all are known by this name, and all were bred by Henri Bouschet from Petit Bouschet and Garnacha. Petit Bouschet was itself a crossing of Teinturier du Cher with Aramon (see here), produced earlier by Henri’s father. One of Henri’s crosses is Alicante Henri Bouschet; another is Alicante Bouschet no. 2; they are almost indistinguishable. The idea was to have a deep-coloured grape to blend with the prolific but light-coloured Aramon, but one that was of better quality than Teinturier du Cher. Alicante Bouschet (of which there were umpteen versions, crossed at different times and some worse than others) spread rapidly through the south of France in the years after 1885, and was planted, too, in the Southwest (including Bordeaux), Burgundy and the Loire Valley. In Spain a version is known as Garnacha Tintorera (see Garnacha, here).
It is now in decline everywhere in France, and extinct in many places. (Its blending partner Aramon, which has one-15th of the colour of Alicante, is also in decline.) It is early ripening and quite high-yielding, though at very high yields of 200 hectolitres per hectare or more, which it can attain on flat, fertile land, the alcohol level drops to 10 per cent or less.
In Portugal’s Alentejo region it produces its most successful wine, with good colour, tannin and fruit, and is also grown with varying results in southern and central Italy, Israel, North Africa, Croatia and Bosnia. In Chile it is usually blended with varieties like Cabernet Sauvignon, though it can make good concentrated, rough-fruited varietal wines. In California it supplied home winemakers during Prohibition, but its acreage has fallen drastically since. A few serious winemakers in Napa and Sonoma produce some, and it’s a beefy, brawny, foursquare mouthful. Best producers: (California) Papagni, St Francis, Topolos at Russian River; (Portugal) Quinta da Abrigada, Quinta do Carmo, D F J Vinhos, Esporão, Herdade do Mouchão, J P Ramos.
Burgundy’s second white grape probably originated in the region and is the offspring of Gouais Blanc and Pinot, which makes it a sibling of Chardonnay, Gamay and others. It comes a long way after Chardonnay both in reputation and in area planted (1700ha as opposed to 12,765ha for Chardonnay). Plantings are scattered throughout the region, mainly in the Côte d’Or and Saône-et-Loire departments, and on sites not suited to Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. On the Côte d’Or, where it was once interplanted with Chardonnay for the sake of its acidity, it is now confined to the hilltop vineyards and to the plain. Bourgogne Aligoté is traditionally mixed with cassis to make kir, but in a good year, and particularly from Bouzeron in the Côte Chalonnaise, where it now has its own appellation, the wine is well worth drinking on its own for the sake of its fresh, mineral and buttermilk flavour. Some examples can age well, but generally it is for drinking young. It does not take well to oak aging. Aligoté can also be included in the blend for Crémant de Bourgogne. There is also a patch of vines at Die east of the Rhône Valley.
A. et P. de Villaine
Aubert de Villaine’s day job is running Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, but he lives in Bouzeron and makes a sublimely pure, fresh, mineral-streaked Aligoté from his own grapes.
In Eastern Europe, where Romania, Bulgaria, Russia and the CIS countries grow it in large quantities, it is grown on flat land and its Burgundian hillside yields of 50–70hl/ha can triple, with a consequent drop in quality. There is also some in Chile and in California. Best producers: (Burgundy) d’Auvenay, M Bouzereau, Coche-Dury, A Ente, J-H Goisot, Jayer-Gilles, Denis Mortet, Tollot-Beaut, A et P de Villaine.
An old variety indigenous to Savoie, this is also known as Roussette in Savoie. It’s a very high-quality grape, lateish ripening, with high acidity and an unusual, pungent, mineral, mountain herbs and lemon pith aroma, and it ages extremely well. It is low-yielding but resistant to rot.
In Savoie its wine is called Roussette de Savoie, with several appellations (Frangy, Marestel, Monterminod and Monthoux). If the name Rousette is not followed by a specific appellation name, then up to half the blend may be Chardonnay, making for a good but less distinctive wine. It may also be blended into the local sparkling wines to add aroma.
Altesse de Bugey, which comes from scattered vineyards between Savoie and Lyon, is usually a blend of Altesse with a little Chardonnay. Best producers: (France) Maison de Chautagne, Maison Mollex, de Monterminod, Prieuré St-Christophe, Varichon & Clerc.
This is the grape that brings flavour in bucketfuls to the white wines of northwestern Iberia. It has all the genetic diversity that points to great age (Terras Gauda in Rías Baixas has collected 115 different clones, with great differences between them), though it’s not clear which side of the Portuguese–Spanish border it originated. In terms of aroma, there is always a fresh sea breeze to match the grapefruit and apple blossom scent, and an acid minerality to temper its yeasty ripeness of texture. Its fruit is white-fleshed, attractively crunchy even when ripe and the briney crash of the Atlantic waves on mossy rock is quite discernable even in its riper form.
Albariño is by far Spain’s most fashionable white variety, particularly when grown in Rías Baixas, and rumours that far more is drunk in Galicia than is actually grown there probably have some truth in them. In Portugal it becomes Alvarinho, and is a key component (and often bottled on its own) of Vinho Verde. This is the grape in its lightest form and high yields are the reason. While better producers train their vines on wires and control yields for greater flavour, some Vinho Verde is still produced on pergolas, where yields are high and flavours low. You might even see some of the vines trained up poplar trees, as in Roman times. Even when trained on wires, canopies have to be large to allow for the vine’s vigour in a wet, humid climate. Thirty to 40 buds per vine is normal and even at that level of cropping the wines can still reach 12–12.5 per cent alcohol.
There is some experimentation with barrique fermentation and aging and in Portugal, in Dão and Estremadura, the vines are being pruned and trained with a much smaller canopy, and lower crops. Despite being native to the rainy Northwest, Albariño withstands heat well, and the Australians thought it would do well there until they discovered that all their plantings were Savagnin – and pretty good, too. New Zealand, California, Oregon, Washington, New York and Uruguay have some tasty, though softer examples.
When it’s ripe, you can find golden gage plum skins and white peach flesh, but usually Albariño is light and zesty, merely hinting at exotic fruit, and more dominated by grapefruit blossom, lemon zest and an attractive ability to express a rocky, briney minerality. The grape has thick skins and a high proportion of skins and pips to flesh, which means lots of aroma, but a slight tendency to bitterness. Greater ripeness might eradicate the latter, but would reduce the wine’s ethereal lightness. The standard of Albariños greatly improved in the 2010s.
Fefiñanes from Rías Baixas in Spain’s Galicia region is delicious to drink young but has the rare ability to age brilliantly – I’ve had wonderful examples more than 10 years old. Even so, new Albariños are released very young – often before Christmas of the year of harvest.
Pazo Señorans
A classic modern Albariño, full-flavoured and remarkably citrussy, and intended for early drinking. Vintages vary greatly from year to year in this part of Spain, but advances in the vineyard and winery are producing super, mouthwatering wines every year.
Grand’Arte
Most Portuguese Alvarinho is grown in the country’s warm, wet north and it is the main quality component of Vinho Verde. Yet Alvarinho is also useful further south – this lighter, fresh style comes from near Lisbon.
Lagar de Fornelos vineyards in the Rías Baixas DO, Galicia in northwest Spain. Albariño’s thick skins help protect it against rot in the wet climates of Galicia and of Vinho Verde, across the border in northern Portugal. All that rain, plus the vine’s natural vigour, means that whether it is trained on pergolas or wires it must be allowed to have a big, spreading canopy. If the canopy is cramped and dense, rot and underripeness become big problems.
Theories abound about what is or is not Albariño. Science disproves many of them, but these are some. Albariño is related to Riesling and southwest France’s Petit Manseng. But it isn’t. And Madeira’s Alvarinho Liláz is not Albariño either.
CONSUMER INFORMATION
Synonyms & local names
Albariño is the grape’s Spanish name and Alvarinho the Portuguese name, though it is often called Cainho Branco. The Spanish grape called Albarín Blanco is probably not the same.
SPAIN/Galicia/Rías Baixas Agro de Bazán, Castro Martín, Martin Códax, Condes de Albarei, Quinta de Couselo, DO Ferreiro, Fillaboa, Forjas del Salnés, Adegas Galegas, Lagar de Besada, Lagar de Fornelos, La Val, Marqués de Vizhoja, Gerardo Méndez, Viña Nora, Palacio de Fefiñanes, Pazo de Barrantes, Pazo San Mauro, Pazo de Señorans, Pazos de Lusco, Raúl Pérez, Santiago Ruiz, Terras Gauda, Tricó, La Val, Valmiñor, Zárate; Ribeira Sacra Dominio do Bibei, Guimaro, Adegas Moure; other Raimat.
PORTUGAL/Vinho Verde Afros, Quinta do Ameal, Quinta da Aveleda, Quinta de Azevedo/Sogrape, Quinta da Baguinha, Quinta de Gomariz, Quinta da Lixa, Quinta de Lourosa, Quintas de Melgaço, Anselmo Mendes, Palácio de Brejoeira, Provam, Quinta de Simães, Quinta de Soalheiro, Quinta do Tamariz, Caso do Valle; rest of Portugal D F J Vinhos, Quinta do Feital, José Maria da Fonseca; USA/California Bonny Doon, Cambiata, Hendry, Marimar Estate, Tangent; Oregon Abacela; New York Bedell, Palmer; Australia First Drop, Gemtree; New Zealand Coopers Creek, Stanley.
Fifteen Spanish Albariño wines
Agro de Bazán Granbazán Ambar Rías Baixas
Castro Martin Rías Baixas
DO Ferreiro Rías Baixas
Fillaboa Rías Baixas
Forjas del Salnés Rías Baixas
Gerardo Méndez Rías Baixas do Ferreiro Cepas Vellas
Adegas Moure Moure Abadia da Cova Ribeira Sacra Albariño
Palacio de Fefinañes Rías Baixas
Pazo de Barrantes Rías Baixas
Pazo Señoráns Rías Baixas Selección de Añada
Pazos de Lusco Lusco Rías Baixas
Raúl Pérez Rías Baixas
Tricó Rías Baixas
La Val Rías Baixas
Zárate Rías Baixas
Quinta da Aveleda Alvarinho
Quinta do Azevedo Vinho Verde
Quinta do Feital Minho
Quinta do Gomariz Vinho Verde
Quinta da Lixa Pouco Comum
Quintas de Melgaço Vinho Verde Alvarinho
Doña Paterna Vinho Verde Alvarinho
Grand’ Arte Alvarinho
Manoel Salvador Pereira Dom Salvador Vinho Verde Alvarinho
Anselmo Mendes Alvarinho
Sogrape Morgadio da Torre Vinho Verde Alvarinho
Quinta do Soalheiro ‘Allo’ Vinho Verde Alvarinho
See Albariño, here.
Aka Azal Tinto: it’s a low-yielding grape that forms part of the Vinho Verde tinto blend and usually lacks the character to be bottled alone.
There are only 20ha (50 acres) of this vine in the world, and 16 of them are around the Swiss town of Vétroz in the Valais. Its wines are often slightly off-dry and may be late-harvested: at their best they have concentration, length and individuality. Their flavour has been described as resembling that of brown bread, but they tend to lack acidity – as does brown bread, of course. Best producers: (Switzerland) Bonvin, Fontannaz, J-R Germanier, Caves Imesch.
A lesser part of the Lambrusco blend (see here), Ancellotta is found also in many other parts of Italy and there is some in Argentina, Brazil and Switzerland. It is generally blended for its deep colour, not for its rather cloddish flavour.
See Inzolia, here.
A white grape much grown in the hot Alentejo, Estremadura and Terras do Sado regions of southern Portugal. It withstands heat, keeps its balance and in recent years has been making attractive, tropically fruited wines.
See Tempranillo, here.
This highly productive variety covered the plains of the south of France from the mid-19th century, when it was planted for its resistance to oidium, until the 1960s when the rather better-quality Carignan began to take its place. At low yields and in good sites it can give attractive, earthy, spicy, somewhat rustic wines; at high yields it always needed the extra colour – and flavour, however rough – provided by its traditional blending partner, Alicante Bouschet. Today it is rarely taken seriously except by the Mas de Daumas Gassac estate north of Montpellier who produce a herby, lush but light wine at a local cooperative. Its main claim to fame is that through its parent, Gouais Blanc, it’s a half-sibling of 80 or more other varieties.
A Champagne grape which is almost extinct, but included here because Bollinger has some experimental plantings, and you never know. Champagne Moutard-Diligent bottles a varietal Vieilles Vignes Arbane.
See Menu Pineau here.
Any grape that can retain its acidity in the baking summer temperatures of southern Portugal is bound to be popular; and acidity is Arinto’s raison d’être. It can age well in bottle and when made well has considerable finesse and appealing lemony, peachy fruit. Some is now being fermented and aged in new French or Portuguese oak, and provided the oak is handled with a light touch this seems to add complexity to the wine. It forms 75 per cent of the blend in Bucelas, the rest being Esgana Cão, and is on the increase in Bairrada, Alentejo and Ribatejo. In Vinho Verde it is called Pedernã: here again high acidity is its hallmark. Other Arintos are usually aliases for something else: Arinto de Dão is Malvasia Fina, Arinto dos Açores is Sercial. Best producers: (Portugal) Alcântara Agricola, Quinta do Avelar, Quinta da Boavista, Campolargo, J M da Fonseca, Quinta da Murta, Luís Pato, Quinta dos Pesos, Quinta da Romeira, Quinta do Valdoeiro, Caves Velhas.
This elegantly and exotically perfumed Piedmontese grape has only found popularity as a varietal wine relatively recently. Its traditional role was as a softener for Nebbiolo in Barolo and elsewhere, and a few rows would be planted alongside the Nebbiolo for this purpose. Few dedicated vineyards existed until a couple of producers began to take a serious interest in the vine in the 1970s and 1980s. The first example I had was from the great Barbaresco producer, Bruno Giacosa.
Without that change in fortune it might well have become extinct. Its problems include low acidity, a tendency to oxidation, susceptibility to powdery mildew, low yields and a temperamental nature, but better viticultural practices, and planting on the chalky, sandy soils of the Roero gives good acidity and structure, and improved clones can help with the mildew problem. Blending in some wine grown on sandy clay soil will add perfume. Typically the wine has a quite powerful aroma of almonds, pears and peaches and occasionally of hops. Plantings are on the rise in the Roero, encouraged by high prices; the DOC wine is called Roero Arneis. Some producers vinify and/or age the wine in oak; there are also passito versions. It is also supposed to be added in small quantities to Nebbiolo-based red Roero, though this practice is on the decline. It is producing some tasty whites in Australia. Best producers: (Italy) Almondo, Araldica, Brovia, Carretta, Ceretto, Cascina Chicco, Correggia, Deltetto, Giacosa, Malabaila, Malvirà, Angelo Negro, Prunotto, Vietti, Gianni Voerzio; (Australia) Dromana Estate, Kingston, Pizzini; (New Zealand) Trinity Hill; (USA) Seghesio.
This German crossing of two Riesling clones is grown on Madeira for table wines. It produces generous yields of slightly floral wines.
A variety grown in the deep southwest of France for alcoholic, perfumed, somewhat heavy wine. It is found in the Pacherenc du Vic-Bilh appellation in northeast Béarn. It is usually blended with Gros and Petit Manseng, and Courbu, and is beginning to receive a little more attention from producers.
See Malvasia Fina here.
Steely, minerally fruit, high acidity and good length are the keynotes of this high quality Greek grape. It is the main vine on the island of Santorini, where the vineyards are ungrafted and many vines are 70 years old. It is also grown in Attica, Halkidiki and Drama on the mainland; outside Santorini, flavours tend to be less minerally, but broader and fruitier. Surprisingly, it oxidizes easily and is sometimes oak-aged, though, in the case of dry wines, seldom successfully. It may be blended with the less acidic Savatiano and the fatter, more scented Malagousia and also with Aidani in sweet dried-grape wines. Best producers: (Greece) Domaine Carras, Gaia, Koutsoyiannopoulos.
A Greek grape grown both for wine and for the table. It makes decent wine with a delicate aroma, though cool conditions and a long growing season can produce better wines. It is often blended with other grapes, particularly Assyrtico. Athiri Mavro is a dark-skinned version. Best producer: (Greece) Domaine Carras.
This vine of Mediterranean France is now in retreat, replaced by grapes of better colour and better quality. Some cuttings went to Australia in the early 1830s, and a few plantings still exist there, and also in California.
An old Alsace-Lorraine variety, still widely planted there, and sometimes called Pinot Auxerrois. It makes fairly neutral wine, quite broad, fat and honeyed at its best, but is seldom bottled on its own; instead it is blended with Pinot Blanc, perfectly legally, and sold under that name, or, in a wider blend, as Edelzwicker. It’s well connected: through its parents, Pinot and Gouais Blanc, it has a vast number of relatives.
Auxerrois is also the Cahors name for (black) Cot, or Malbec. See Malbec, here.
Portuguese grape grown mostly in the southeast of the Vinho Verde region close to the Douro river. Yields are high and the grapes are large; alcohol levels are quite high, and acidity is lower than with most Vinho Verde grapes, so the wines feel relatively full and weighty. Best producers: (Portugal) Caves do Casalinho, Quinta de Covela, Paço de Teixeró.
Late-ripening, high- to very high-acid Portuguese grape grown for Vinho Verde in northern Portugal. Best producers: (Portugal) Quinta do Outeiro de Baixo, Casa do Valle.
This heavily scented German vine is the result of crossing a Silvaner x Riesling with Müller-Thurgau. It reaches high sugar levels but lacks acidity, and only when it is fully ripe does its exotic character really emerge. But at low yields or at Beerenauslesen or Trockenbeerenauslesen levels, it can be overpowering: with Bacchus, more is not necessarily better.
High yields, though, are the norm in the Rheinhessen, its main field of operations, where it is blended into everyday QbA wines. There is also some planted in Mosel-Saar-Ruwer and Franken, but it achieves star status only in England, where it can be England’s best white table wine grape, hedgerow-scented and tasting of elderflower and pears. This is about the closest that England can come to the herbal pungency of Sauvignon Blanc. Not to be confused with the American Riparia x labrusca hybrid, more commonly called Clinton, which, in any case, is black. Best producers: (England) Barkham Manor, Camel Valley, Chapel Down, Sharpham, Three Choirs; (Germany) Juliusspital, Markgraf von Baden/Schloss Salem, Klaus Zimmerling.
Harvesting Baga grapes from 70-year-old vines in Bairrada, its principal home in Portugal. Baga can be an austere, tannic grape and needs careful handling in the winery to bring out its fruit. A proportion of Touriga Nacional in the blend can often work wonders and add extra sugar and depth.
Baco Noir is a French hybrid widely planted in the eastern USA and in Canada for soft, fruity, smoky-tasting red wines. It is a crossing of Folle Blanche with a Vitis riparia vine, and was produced in 1902; in the years that followed it was planted quite widely in many parts of France but has since been largely uprooted from French vineyards, as has its stablemate Baco 22A or Baco Blanc. Best producers: (Canada) Stonechurch Vineyards.
Baco Blanc, also a French hybrid, was bred in 1898 by the same eponymous nurseryman, and was a crossing of Folle Blanche with Noah, an American hybrid. Until the late 1970s Baco Blanc was the main grape for Armagnac in southwest France but is in the process of being phased out in favour of Ugni Blanc, though traditionalists still favour it. It could also be found at one time in New Zealand.
Pub quiz special: which is the only hybrid allowed in a French appellation controlée? Baco Blanc, for Armagnac.
Baga’s bugbears are tannins of the most aggressive sort, coupled with high acidity. This Portuguese vine forms most or all of the blend in Bairrada, on the Atlantic coast, and is also found in nearby Dão and further south in Ribatejo. Traditionally the tannin problem was exacerbated by fermenting the stalks with the must, and softened (up to a point) by leaving the wines in bottle for some years – as many as 10, 15 or even 20.
These days vinification techniques are aimed at controlling the astringency and producing rounder, softer wines from the start, in which Baga’s rich, berried fruit is to the fore. Other varieties, especially Touriga Nacional (see here), may be blended in.
Baga lasts very well in bottle, even up to 20 years. It attains greater depth with age, but it is never a wine of enormous finesse. It is fairly high yielding, giving up to 8 tonnes per hectare in Dão, and more than 12 tonnes per hectare for Vinho Regional wines.
To make a serious wine it needs to be grown on very well exposed slopes, but even so, one of the most go-ahead producers in the region, Sogrape, attributes the improvement in quality in Dão in the 1990s to the reduction and eventual exclusion of Baga and the inclusion of other grapes in the blend. That’s not very kind since Baga is from the Dão region, but its role has now been taken by Touriga Nacional – also a Dão native, but one that’s easier to love. Baga, though still common in the Dão region, is now allowed only in the regional Beiras IGP. Elsewhere varietal Baga, which manages to balance the slightly dry tannins with good fruit, can be fairly attractive and occasionally shows quite piercing blackcurrant fruit.
Its synonyms include Bago de Louro, Poerininha, Tinta Bairrada and Tinta de Baga. Best producers: (Portugal) Caves Aliança, Quinta das Bágeiras, Bussaco Palace Hotel, Quinta do Carvalhinho, D F J Vinhos, Gonçalves Faria, Quinta de Foz de Arouce, Caves Messias, Luís Pato, Caves Primavera, Quinta da Rigodeira, Casa de Saima, Caves São João, Sogrape.
An obscure Italian variety found in Emilia-Romagna and on the French island of Corsica. In Provence it is known as Barbaroux and is occasionally used in the blend for Côtes de Provence. It is not the same grape as the equally obscure Barbarossa found across the Italian border in Liguria. Best producer: (Italy) Fattoria Paradiso.
Barbera is best known outside Italy for being Piedmont’s second-best red grape, after Nebbiolo, but inside Italy it has a wider market. It grows virtually all over the country, popping up in the most unlikely blends. The wine can be young and fruity, or dark, serious (sometimes a little self-consciously serious) and barrique-aged: indeed, new oak barriques seem to have a more natural affinity for Barbera’s straightforward cherryish, sappy flavours than for Nebbiolo’s exotic perfumes. But while Barbera gains complexity with oak it also loses some varietal character; and there are many very good examples, rich and sumptuous, which have never seen the inside of a barrique.
It is believed to have originated in the Monferrato hills, in central Piedmont, and here it is still planted on the best sites; further west, in Barolo and Barbaresco, it has to concede these to Nebbiolo. Overall about half the Piedmontese vineyard is given over to Barbera, and it is from Piedmont that the finest, most concentrated examples come. Barbera d’Alba has the most complexity and power, along with a deep colour; Barbera d’Asti is brighter in colour, with elegance and finesse. It is in Piedmont, too, that there has been a traditionalist-versus-modernist debate similar to that over Nebbiolo, although Barbera has more conclusively swung towards modernism and use of the barrique.
The grape’s high acidity makes it ideal for warm climates, and its low tannin and good colour are very much in the currently fashionable mould. Indeed, the New World is now showing quite a bit of interest in all things Italian, and Barbera is an obvious candidate for anywhere warm. But in fact it has been more than just a bit player in the Americas for some time. In the pre-Cabernet days in California it was an important variety – especially since many wineries were of Italian origin – and it is making a bit of a comeback now. The same is true in Argentina, where it came over with the tides of Italian immigration, and, despite being largely used for everyday wines, has shown that its fruity, fresh acid style can be a success in the modern world. In both countries yields will have to be kept down if we are to see how good New World Barbera could be. Certainly it is finding this transcontinental leap easier to make than Nebbiolo, and Australia, especially the Barossa, is starting to produce some decent wines. Elsewhere in Europe, there is a little in Slovenia, Greece, Romania and Israel. But watch this space.
Barbera’s most evident characteristics are high acidity, low tannin and ripe, sometimes almost dark fruit. It can be young and cherry-fresh; or weighty, moreish and with a sour-cherry twist at the end; or again barrique-aged, plummy and rounder, with a touch of spice. This is the most serious style, with vibrant aromas and lots of body; but Barbera never has quite such exuberance as Cabernet Sauvignon, for example. It has a danger of becoming a little raisiny if overripe, but the acidity rarely fails, whatever the style, and we should see more and more of this adaptable grape in the future.
Most of the best vineyards in the Alba region are planted with Nebbiolo, but this Barbera d’Alba is based on grapes from the ‘Curra’ vineyard on a southwest-facing, horseshoe curve of slopes between Neive and the village of Barbaresco. The vines are 40 years old, and the wine gets 15 months aging in Allier oak, giving it a soft caramel coating over the ripe yet tangy fruit.
Coriole
Coriole were one of the first producers in the McLaren Valley to begin experimenting with Italian varieties – long before we began talking about global warming.
Seghesio
Based in Sonoma County, California, Seghesio have been successful grape-growers of Italian varieties, both red and white, for over a century.
New oak barriques in the cellar of Angelo Gaja in Barbaresco, Piedmont. The wine takes up polysaccharides from the oak, and these increase its richness and reduce its astringency. New wood also gives particular sorts of tannins – hydrolysable – to the wine which act as antioxidants.
Barbera grapes. All the best Piedmontese Barberas are made from yields of less than 45hl/ha; from yields above that level the wines can be very attractive, but they will not be great. As for where Barbera comes from: there is no mention of it in Piedmont before the end of the 18th century, and it may be the result of an unknown vineyard crossing.
CONSUMER INFORMATION
Synonyms & local names
Local names include Barbera d’Asti, Barbera Dolce, Barbera Fine, Barbera Forte, Barbera Grossa, Barbera Riccia and Barbera Vera.
ITALY/Piedmont/Barbera d’Alba Gianfranco Alessandria, Elio Altare, Azelia, Enzo Boglietti, Brovia, Burlotto, Cascina Fontana, Cascina Luisin, Ceretto, Cigliuti, Domenico Clerico, Elvio Cogno, Aldo Conterno, Giacomo Conterno, Conterno-Fantino, Corino, Giacosa, Elio Grasso, Bartolo Mascarello, Giuseppe Mascarello, Mauro Molino, Monfalletto-Cordero di Montezemolo, Andrea Oberto, Armando Parusso, Pelissero, Ferdinando Principiano, Giuseppe Rinaldi, Albino Rocca, Bruno Rocca, Giovanni Rosso, Luciano Sandrone,Vajra, Mauro Veglio, Vietti, Gianni Voerzio, Roberto Voerzio; Barbera d’Asti Araldica/Alasia, La Barbatella, Pietro Barbero, Bava, Bertelli, Braida, Cascina Castlèt, Coppo, Hastae, Franco M Martinetti, Il Mongetto, Perrone, Pietro, Laiolo Reginin, La Spinetta, Vietti, Vinchio e Vaglio Serra; Langhe Elio Altare, Boglietti, Silvano Bolmida, Bongiovanni, Cascina Fontana, Clerico, Aldo Conterno, Giacomo Conterno, Conterno-Fantino, Gaja, Rocche dei Manzoni, Marchesi di Gresy, Bartolo Mascarello, Giuseppe Mascarello, F Nada, Vigneti Luigi Oddero, Parusso, Punset, G Rinaldi, Roagna, Giovanni Rosso, Trediberri, Vajra, Roberto Voerzio; Emilia-Romagna Montesissa, La Stoppa, La Tosa. AUSTRALIA Chain of Ponds, First Drop. USA/California Palmina, Preston, Renwood, Jeff Rundquist, Seghesio. ARGENTINA Norton, Santiago Graffiner. SOUTH AFRICA Fairview.
Ten Barbera d’Alba wines
G Alesssandria Barbera d’Alba
Burlotto Barbera d’Alba
Cascina Luisin Barbera d’Alba
Aldo Conterno Barbera d’Alba Conca Tre Pile
Ferdinando Principiano Barbera d’Alba Pian Romualdo
Giuseppe Rinaldi Barbera d’Alba
Albino Rocca Barbera d’Alba Gèpin
Giovanni Rosso Barbera d’Alba
G D Vajra Barbera d’Alba
Roberto Voerzio Barbera d’Alba Riserva Pozzo dell’Annunciata
La Barbatella Barbera d’Asti Superiore Vigna dell’Angelo
Bava Barbera d’Asti Superiore Stradivario
Bertelli Barbera d’Asti San Antonio Vieilles Vignes
Braida Barbera d’Asti Bricco dell’Uccellone and Barbera d’Asti Ai Suma
Coppo Barbera d’Asti Pomorosso
Franco M Martinetti Barbera d’Asti Montruc
Perrone Barbera d’Asti Tasmorcan
Pietro Barbero Barbera d’Asti La Vignassa
Laiolo Reginin Barbera d’Asti
Vietti Barbera d’Asti
Chain of Ponds Barbera The Stopover (Australia)
First Drop Under the Gun Barbera (Australia)
Norton Barbera (Argentina)
Renwood Amador County Barbera (California)
Jeff Rundquist Barbera, Dick Cooper Vineyards (California)
A grape of southwest France, which had the great good luck to be picked up by a local Michelin three-star chef – Michel Guérard of Les Prés d’Eugénie – when he decided to turn winemaker, saving it from extinction. It’s not bad in a rather hearty, alcoholic style with a slightly Sauvignon Blanc-type apples and pears flavour. Possibly a crossing of Folle Blanche and Sauvignon Blanc, it is part of the blend in the Tursan appellation.
Portuguese name for the grape known in France’s Jura region as Trousseau (see here). In Portugal it is one of the permitted grapes for Port, though it is not one of the recommended five varieties. It is also found further south, especially in Dão. It is valued as a blending grape – it gives good alcohol and substance to a blend – but it yields poorly and so is being grown less and less. There is an old Portuguese saying that to plant Bastardo is an excellent way for a grower to become poor. It does, however, have potential for fair quality if grown and made well. It is grown to a small extent over the border in Galicia under the names of Merenzao or María Ordona; some Australian ‘Touriga’ is in fact Bastardo. There is a white grape called Bastardo grown in Portugal and the Canaries, which may just be a white version of red Bastardo. In fact, there are quite a few Bastardos, Bastardinhos, Spanish Bastardos, Little Spanish Bastardinhos – and the rest – in Portugal, which can be construed either as a comment on the difficulty of getting a crop or some long-standing grudge against their Spanish neighbours. Best producers: (Portugal) Caves Aliança, Quinta do Giesta, Caves São João.
A quite robust, ageworthy grape used for sparkling and still wines in the Portuguese regions of Bairrada and Dão; in the latter it is known as Borrado das Moscas, or ‘Fly Droppings’, because of its speckled skin (not its flavour). The wine combines high acidity with high alcohol and can become honeyed after some years in bottle. Quality is improving, and many bright, aromatic examples now reflect the intrinsic quality of the grape. Skin contact before fermentation seems, however, to produce a slightly soapy, flowery aroma. Its high acidity means that it is also used for sparkling wine in Bairrada. Best producers: (Portugal) Caves Aliança, D F J Vinhos, Luís Pato, Caves São João, Sogrape.
See Muscat of Hamburg here.
See Prié here.
Late-ripening, very dark-coloured grape found in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and often made as a varietal, but sometimes as a field blend because it needs the presence of other vines for its flowers to be pollinated. Medium weight; keeps its acidity well.
An Austrian variety produced in the 1920s by crossing Portugieser and Blaufränkisch. The wines are straightforward, low in acidity, and light, though a few growers make more concentrated, blackberry-scented wines. Burgenland producer Willi Opitz makes a sweet wine. Best producer: (Austria) Willi Opitz.
The German and Austrian synonym for Pinot Noir. Spätburgunder is a more common synonym in Germany. Best producers: (Austria) Albert Gesellmann, Fritz Wieninger.
A lightweight, high-yielding grape used for both wine and the table and found in Austria and Germany, where it’s known as Portugieser (see here). Most authorities think it originated in Austria, though there is a view that it arrived there from Portugal, unsurprisingly. At best it makes everyday wines, easily giving crops of 160hl/ha. The colour is pale, and acidity is low. In Austria its synonyms are Vöslauer and Badener. Grown widely in Niederösterreich, it is the country’s third most planted black grape but is gradually declining.
A German synonym for Pinot Noir (see here). Plain Spätburgunder is a more common name.
An Austrian grape found in the region of Weststeiermark, where it is almost all made into the local pink speciality, Schilcher. It may also be called Schilcher. Schilcher is notable both for its startlingly high acidity, and for the speed with which it sells out, to locals and visitors alike. It has a light redcurrant flavour, a lot of redcurrant acidity, and is best drunk young and at a local café. There are some pretty tart examples of red wine from the grape, too. Wildbacher Spätblau is a different grape, and anyway almost extinct.
A potentially very good-quality grape found mainly in Austria, Germany (where it is called both Lemberger and Limberger, see here) and points east.
The best Austrian examples are intense and zesty, often unoaked, with flavours of blueberries, red cherries and redcurrants. Oak is coming more into balance these days, and the wines have an appetizing, savoury freshness. The vine produces 100hl/ha or more with ease, but the wines get thin and weedy if made from overcropped grapes. In a blend, low-yield Blaufränkisch brings structure and acidity. The vine needs warmth, and flourishes in the Neusiedlersee and southern Burgenland regions of Austria. In Hungary it is called Kékfrankos; in the Czech Republic, Croatia and Vojvodina (Serbia), Frankovka; in northeast Italy, Franconia; in Canada and the USA usually Lemberger. Best producers: (Austria) Feiler-Artinger, Albert Gesellmann, Gernot Heinrich, Kollwentz, Krutzler, Nittnaus, Ernst Triebaumer; (USA) Channing Daughters.
The name of Boal or Bual has been given to many Portuguese vines: there is Boal Bagudo, Boal Cachudo, Boal Carrasquenho, Boal Branco, Boal de Alicante, Boal Espinho and Boal Bonifacio, or Vital, and a raft of others. Of these, Boal Cachudo and Boal Branco are the same and in mainland Portugal more often called Malvasia Fina (see here).
Boal Branco is recommended for Madeira and gives the name Boal to a fairly sweet type of the wine. Any wine labelled Boal should be made from this grape; but minute plantings have not increased; the shipping houses prefer to buy the cheaper Tinta Negra Mole, the island’s workhorse grape, and there is a limit to what the small Madeira market will bear. Also growers are unwilling to plant what have become unfamiliar grapes. Boal, in any case, is a poor yielder, being subject to poor fruit set if there are high winds at flowering time. Best producers: (Portugal) Barros e Sousa, Blandy, Cossart Gordon, Henriques & Henriques, Leacock, Rutherford & Miles.
A dark-coloured, robust grape used for bulk wine and grape concentrate in most of southeast Spain, but showing real class in Manchuela. In Utiel-Requena replanting with Tempranillo is recommended, but Bobal still accounts for 84 per cent of the vineyard there. It can have attractive black cherry fruit and it gives deep, juicy rosé. Best producers: (Spain) Gandía.
Turkish grape giving unusual, tannic but delightfully scented red wines of real personality. Its wine can be on the aggressive side but it is increasing in popularity and is often blended with Öküzgözü, with the latter’s sleeker tannins and somewhat higher acidity. It ages well either alone or in a blend. As Turkey attempts to develop an export market, it is to be hoped they resolutely stick with the real individuality of their native grapes rather than internationalize their wines.
High-yielding Bombino Bianco is found in Emilia-Romagna, the Marche, Lazio and in southern Italy. It also goes under the name Pagadebit due to its propensity to pay a grape grower’s debts by virtue of its reliable cropping. Another synonym is Straccia Cambiale. Trebbiano d’Abruzzo may be the same grape.
A great deal has long been shipped from southern Italy northwards to Germany for blending with strongly aromatic German varieties to produce EU table wine or cheap Sekt. It also makes decent raisins. But it deserves better than that. In the north of Italy its wines can be distinctly tasty, though seldom very aromatic; as Trebbiano d’Abruzzo (if it is) it can display much more depth than true Trebbiano. But a lot depends on how it is cultivated and handled. Best producers: (Italy) Giovanni d’Alfonso del Sordo, Rivera.
If you relish confusion, you’ll love this one. Bonarda is not one but a whole clutch of Italian grapes, and all are different from the grape called Bonarda in Argentina.
Italy first: the Bonarda found in Piedmont is blended into Gattinara and Ghemme, along with Nebbiolo (see here) and Croatina (see here). This is Bonarda Piemontese – proper Bonarda, if there is such a thing. The Bonarda of Oltrepò Pavese and Colli Piacentini is Croatina. The Bonarda of Novara, Vercelli and Pavia is Uva Rara. There are other Bonardas in Italy, too, but only Bonarda Piemontese is true Bonarda.
In the Novara and Vercelli hills in Piedmont there are said to be two clones: Bonarda di Gattinara, from Vercelli, and Bonarda Novarese, from Novara. The most important Italian Bonarda quantitively is the one more properly called Croatina from Oltrepò Pavese and Colli Piacentini, which makes soft and simple reds of deep colour and a certain plummy richness.
In Argentina (where there is a great deal of Bonarda) they may have finally pinned down what Bonarda is. Cheers went up when they decided it was the same as California’s Charbono, which they also thought might be Dolcetto, until they discovered it was actually Douce Noir, a grape from France’s Savoie region which used to be part of the Kingdom of Sardinia – along with Piedmont. Yes, I’d re-read this entry a couple of times if I were you. But in Argentina, call it what you will, it delivers. It is very late ripening, but in warm spots can outclass Malbec. It does, however, need to be allowed to ripen thoroughly, in which case it has a marvellous scent of wild strawberries and balsamic vinegar acidity. Best producers: (Italy) Mazzolino, Vercesi del Castellazzo; (Argentina) La Agricola, Altos Las Hormigas, Anubis, Catena, Zuccardi.
Very dark-skinned Vinho Verde variety also grown in Galicia, where it is known as Caíño Tinto. It’s high in alcohol and acidity, and in Vinho Verde is usually blended with Vinhão. Carbonic maceration can tame the tannins.
See Bical, opposite.
Ligurian white grape found in Cinque Terre and blended with Albarolo and Vermentino in the local sweet wine, Cinque Terre Sciacchetrà, which is full of honey and nuts and dried apricot flavours.
See Cabernet Franc (here).
One of five grapes used for white Châteauneufdu-Pape, Bourboulenc has an incisive quality and a modicum of citrus perfume which makes it popular throughout the southern Rhône and Languedoc, as well as in much of Provence. Except in the La Clape sub-zone of Coteaux du Languedoc, it is always a minority partner in the blend. If picked too early it tastes lean and neutral, but when ripe (and it is a late ripener) it has good richness and depth, as well as citrus acidity and angelica freshness. In a warming world always on the lookout for white grapes that can hold acidity in hot conditions, Bourboulenc should be more widely planted. Best producers: (France) Caraguilhes, Lastours, la Négly, Pech-Redon, la Rivière Haute, la Rouquette-sur-Mer.
A vine discovered in 1900 by Clotar Bouvier in Nether Styria in Austria (now Slovenia). It reaches high sugar levels but has low acidity, and is used for sweet wines of unremarkable quality in Austria’s Burgenland region, though I’ve had one or two good fat examples. The best are blended with some other more acidic variety, often Welschriesling. Best producers: (Austria) Alois Kracher, Lenz Moser.
One of Italy’s more unusual grapes, Brachetto makes every style from dry and still to its more usual type of sweet and sparkling. The colour is light red and the flavour reminiscent of wild strawberries of the most aromatic sort. It is found in Piedmont, and has its own DOC in Acqui. As a sweet red aromatic sparkler it is a delightful, refreshing oddity, but as a still passito wine it has more character and can age for many years. It is not the same as the French grape Braquet which is found in the wines of Bellet, near Nice. Best producers: (Italy) Viticoltori dell’Acquese, Banfi Strevi, Bertolotto, Braida, Contero, Matteo Correggia, Piero Gatti, Domenico Ivaldi, Giovanni Ivaldi, Giuseppe Marenco, Scarpa.
The name given to the dark-skinned version of Muscat Blanc used in Rutherglen and Glenrowan in Northeast Victoria, Australia for fortified sweet wines. Best producers: (Australia) All Saints, Buller, Campbells, Chambers, McWilliams, Morris, Seppelt, Stanton & Killeen.
The name given to the Sangiovese grape by the producers of the Montalcino zone in Tuscany. It was long thought to be a separate clone. See Sangiovese, here.
Produces light, acidic, ordinary wine in South Africa, and, supposedly, in Alsace.
Cabernet Franc is, in fact, the original Cabernet grape: the far more famous Cabernet Sauvignon is Franc’s offspring. Yet nowadays Franc is the minor member of the family. This isn’t fair. Sure, Cabernet Sauvignon is deeper, darker, richer, more tannic – but Franc has a delightfully mouthwatering perfume and a smooth, soothing texture that can tame the aggression and power of Cabernet Sauvignon. In Bordeaux it also ripens more easily and in difficult years produces much sweeter, more balanced fruit than Cabernet Sauvignon. Indeed, the cool soils of St-Émilion and Pomerol rarely ripen Cabernet Sauvignon, whereas Franc thrives there. It also thrives in the cooler soils of the Loire Valley, and, from the limestone or gravel vineyards of Chinon and Bourgueil, can be one of France’s most lovely red wines.
The current view is that the vine probably came from the Spanish Basque country. But it may have originated in Bordeaux, being sent by Cardinal Richelieu to his abbey of St-Nicolas-de-Bourgueil in the Loire. The Abbé’s name was Breton – Cabernet Franc’s traditional Loire name is Breton. And there is some evidence that it actually originates in Brittany – Breton again. With these ancient vines, there are often various possibilities, no certainties. It is definitely treated with far more respect in the Loire than in Bordeaux. It rarely gets the warmest spots of soil in Bordeaux, but in the Loire it is regarded as highly soil sensitive, reacting quite differently to sand, gravel, or limestone soils. When not overoaked, the wine here displays thrilling texture and flavour as well as – from limestone – great longevity.
In the northern Italy region of Friuli Cabernet Franc used to be confused with Carmenère. Both these varieties produce delightful earthy, fruity Friuli reds. Elsewhere in Italy, and across the world, it is increasingly planted as a partner for Cabernet Sauvignon, often also with Merlot. In parts of Canada, New York State and Washington State it can be more successful than Cabernet Sauvignon, and good varietal wines are appearing from Australia, Chile, Argentina, South Africa, California and New Zealand. One of its most encouraging successes has been in warm, humid conditions in places like Brazil and Virginia, where it can resist the humidity and produce beautifully ripe fresh-flavoured reds. It also has the ability to deal with late season rains without suffering excessive dilution, making it popular in China.
At its best, Cabernet Franc has an unmistakeable and ridiculously appetizing flavour of raspberries, pebbles washed clean by pure spring water and a refreshing tang of blackcurrant leaves. This is the kind of flavour that gets your taste buds going from Chinon and Bourgueil in France’s Loire Valley. Northern Italy and Hungary can often achieve something similar, and New World examples, rare but good, generally emphasize the raspberry, sometimes getting quite rich but holding on to the ripe red teatime jam fruit and a dash of earthiness. Chile, Virginia, Brazil, California, South Africa and New Zealand have produced excellent examples in wildly differing conditions.
Bernard Baudrey is a leading grower in France’s Chinon appellation in the Loire Valley. Son Matthieu makes the wine after stints in California and Tasmania, and Les Granges comes from 10–15-year-old vines mostly grown on gravel, sand and limestone soils. The wine sees no barrel-aging – spending a mere seven months in cement tanks and wooden vats – and is a fine example of the earthy, chewy, fresh fruit style Chinon excels at.
Château Cheval Blanc
There is some 60% Cabernet Franc in the blend of Cheval-Blanc, and that’s massive for the St-Émilion appellation. But there is an unusual amount of extremely suitable gravelly soil in the vineyard.
Le Macchiole
Cabernet Franc is quietly making its mark round the world. Paleo is a fine example from the long-established estate of Le Macchiole in Tuscany’s Bolgheri.
Sorting machine-harvested Cabernet Franc to remove leaves and unhealthy grapes at Château de Targé in the Saumur-Champigny appellation in the Loire Valley. Cabernet Sauvignon never does as well here as its parent – the Loire is too far north and that bit cooler, which suits Cabernet Franc, but makes Cabernet Sauvignon struggle in all but the best years.
Cabernet Franc grapes. The vine is very prone to mutation, and it lacks Cabernet Sauvignon’s intensity and richness but is increasingly showing an ability to keep a deep, raspberry personality under all kinds of conditions.
CONSUMER INFORMATION
Synonyms & local names
There are many French alternatives: the most important are Bouchet, sometimes found in St-Émilion, Pomerol and Fronsac on Bordeaux’s Right Bank, and Breton in the Loire Valley. In Italy Cabernet Franc wine is often labelled simply as Cabernet. Bordo and Cabernet Frank are Italian synonyms.
FRANCE/Bordeaux Ausone, Beauregard, Belair, Canon, Canon-la-Gaffelière, Cheval-Blanc, Clos l’Église, Clos des Jacobins, la Conseillante, Corbin-Michotte, Dassault, l’Évangile, Figeac, la Gaffelière, Lafleur, Larmande, Soutard, Tertre-Daugay, Tour-Figeac, Trottevielle, Vieux-Château-Certan; Loire Valley Philippe Alliet, Y Amirault, Audebert, Bernard Baudry, Baudry-Dutour, Blot/la Butte, la Bonnelière, T Boucard, P Breton, la Chevalerie, Clos de l’Abbaye, Clos Rougeard, Cognard-Taluau, de Coulaine, Couly-Dutheil, Daheuiller, Pierre-Jacques Druet, Filliatreau, S Guion, Hureau, Charles Joguet, Lamé-Delisle-Boucard, la Lande/Delaunay, Langlois-Château, R-N Legrand, A & J Lenoir, Logis de la Bouchardière, Frédéric Mabileau, Nau Frères, Nerleux, la Noblaie, Ogereau, Ouches, de Pallus, Ch. Pierre-Bise, Dom. de l’R, Olga Raffault, Raguenières, Richou, Rochelles, Roches Neuves, de Rochouard, la Sansonnière, P Sourdais/Logis de la Bouchadière, Joël Taluau, Targé, Villeneuve.
ITALY Ca’ del Bosco, Duemani, Marco Felluga, Gasparini, Franz Haas, Le Macchiole, Pojer & Sandri, Quintarelli, Ronco del Gelso, Ronco dei Roseti, Russiz Superiore, San Leonardo, Schiopetto.
USA/California Bevan, Cadence, Cayuse, Delectus, Derenoncourt, Jeff Rundquist, Lang & Reed, St Francis, Viader, Villicana; New York State Schneider; Washington State Andrew Will, Cougar Crest.
CANADA Château des Charmes, Pelee Island, Thirty Bench.
AUSTRALIA Chatsfield, Clonakilla, Fox Creek, Frankland Estate, Grosset.
NEW ZEALAND Esk Valley, Providence.
CHILE Lomo Larga, Santa Rita, Valdivieso.
ARGENTINA Andeluna.
SOUTH AFRICA Antonij Rupert, Boekenhoutskloof, De Trafford, Druk my Niet, Mont du Toit, Raats, Warwick.
Seven Loire Valley wines
Domaine Phillipe Alliet Chinon Vieilles Vignes
Yannick Amirault Bourgueil Les Quartiers
Pierre-Jacques Druet Bourgueil
Ch. du Hureau Saumur-Champigny
Domaine Charles Joguet Chinon Clos de la Dioterie
Domaine des Roches Neuves Saumur-Champigny Cuvée Marginale
Ch. de Villeneuve Saumur-Champigny
Ca’ del Bosco Maurizio Zanella
Marco Felluga Carantan
Le Macchiole Paleo
Quintarelli Alzero
Russiz Superiore Collio Cabernet Franc
Barboursville Cabernet Franc (Virginia)
Lang & Reed Cabernet Franc (California)
Loma Larga Cabernet Franc (Chile)
Schneider Cabernet Franc (New York)
Viader Napa Valley Estate Wine (California)
Cabernet Sauvignon: from Grape to Glass
Geography and History here; Viticulture and Vinification here; Cabernet Sauvignon around the World here; Enjoying Cabernet Sauvignon here
Aristocratic and magnificent, Cabernet Sauvignon is represented here by the sunburst, the emblem of France’s king Louis XIV, also known as Le Roi Soleil or the Sun King. His brilliant court at the Palace of Versailles was filled with images of Louis’ glory. The painting captures Cabernet Sauvignon’s self-importance and regal position in the world of wine.
Where would you start if you were determined to make a splash in the world of fine red wine? What grape varieties would you plant, especially if your country had no indigenous varieties, or, at least none that seemed likely to make a half-decent glass of grog? Would you plant Sangiovese, Nebbiolo, Tempranillo, Zinfandel, Touriga Nacional, Merlot even? No, you wouldn’t, not if you were aiming for the top: you’d plant Cabernet Sauvignon, the world’s most widely planted wine grape, and its top-quality red grape. King Cab, they call it; King Cab the colonizer, the conqueror. Cab the corrupter of other cultures, laying waste other grape varieties and other wine styles round the world with the brutal power of its broadsword, from Tuscany to Bulgaria, from Chile to Spain.
Yet at the same time Cabernet Sauvignon is the consumer’s friend. It was the first grape to give such upfront flavours to red wine, flavours that were so easy to recognize and admire, that they turned on generations of drinkers who’d never come near a bottle of red wine before. Cabernet is both these things. It has been the most insidious of colonizers, infiltrating almost by stealth – and yet it is welcomed by consumers, to whom it offers a lifeline and a recognizable name. Virtually every winemaking country where red vines will ripen has some Cabernet Sauvignon planted somewhere. Love it or loathe it, it may be worth stopping for a second and asking, Why?
Partly because Cabernet Sauvignon tastes recognizably similar, wherever it grows. That’s its appeal to consumers. Its appeal to producers has been different: they knew they could sell anything labelled Cabernet Sauvignon. But it’s also a very obliging grape to grow and vinify. If you’re a grower in an underrated region struggling to find the right way to grow your local vines but also trying to find a way to modernize your traditional wine styles, a judicious addition of Cabernet Sauvignon can be just what you need. Has Cabernet’s presence improved the whole gamut of a region’s wine? The answer is almost always yes.
Of course there’s a danger here. Once Cabernet Sauvignon is in a region it tends to stay there – and its powerful personality means that it will hijack any wine to which it is added. Yet critics have to admit that it makes some of the most wonderful wines in the world. The blackcurrant and cigar box scented wines of Pauillac are, for many wine lovers, the greatest creations of Bordeaux. Napa Valley’s memorable dense Cabernet Sauvignons literally define California wine.
The great wines of Pauillac, based on Cabernet Sauvignon, are an absolute delight, but their classic flavour is relatively simple, like so many great recipes in the kitchen. Blackcurrant fruit, seasoned by the closely related scents of cedar wood, pencil shavings and cigar box. That’s the formula, as simple, as perfect as bacon and eggs or apple pie and cream.
And consequently, when the modern wine world was expanding like crazy in the 1970s and 1980s, Cabernet offered a classic style that seemed easy to understand, and, those pioneers thought, easy to replicate. As it happens, the great Bordeaux reds have proved very difficult to replicate, but all efforts to do so have brought forth many exciting interpretations of Cabernet Sauvignon from around the globe. And the similarities of fruit and texture – sturdiness of tannin, a dark ripeness of black cherry or blackcurrant fruit, and a distinct propensity to develop cedar and cigar box perfume with age – are ultimately of more importance than the differences.
Perhaps Cabernet Sauvignon does lack the perfumed subtlety of Pinot Noir, perhaps it doesn’t possess the heady sensual onslaught of Shiraz or the easygoing plumpness of Merlot; certainly it doesn’t demand the concentration and effort required by Nebbiolo or Sangiovese – but it is always itself. Wherever you plant it, however little money you have to invest in grand wineries and heaps of new oak barrels, you can still make a recognizable, enjoyable Cabernet. Prince or pauper, peasant or plutocrat, Cabernet Sauvignon will express itself reliably and recognizably for them all.
Cabernet Sauvignon gets everywhere. Everywhere the sun shines, everywhere a grape will ripen. Everywhere someone decides they want to make a ‘serious’ red wine, they’ll be planting Cab. That’s why it’s the most widely planted variety in the world. Even England has produced the odd – and I mean odd – bottle from vines grown in plastic tunnels. Germany has approved the vine for cultivation as far north as the Mosel Valley, where in order to have the faintest hope of ripening it would need the best and hottest sites – those currently allocated to Riesling. It’s a mad world.
Cabernet Sauvignon’s popularity, the fact that pretty well everybody who opens a bottle of wine for pleasure has heard of it, works to both its advantage and its disadvantage. For years it was the default red grape for any region trying to sell its wines abroad and make a name for itself: now, there are as many Bordeaux-style blends in the world as any sane person could want. Probably more.
There had to be a backlash. The pendulum has swung towards indigenous varieties. Whether you’re in Italy or Greece, Croatia or Turkey, the way you grab people’s attention now is with some variety that only three people have heard of, and if it’s good, people will try and buy it. International grapes like Cabernet Sauvignon have not exactly had their day, because in France, Italy, Australia and the USA they still produce some of the world’s greatest wines. But Cabernet Sauvignon does tend to hijack any blend of which it’s a part. It’s good to see other grapes getting more of a look-in.
Is Cabernet driving out other varieties? Probably not. The biggest enemy of any wine region is not interloper grape varieties; it is the inability to sell wines internationally for a decent profit. Some countries like Portugal, Greece, Croatia and Italy are busily rejuvenating their industries with indigenous varieties, while Australia, South Africa, the USA, Chile, Argentina and China have all tended to call on Cab.
The myths surrounding the origins of most vines are turning out to be a great deal less interesting than the reality. But the Cabernet Sauvignon myths were always less colourful than those surrounding, say, Syrah. For example, because the word Sauvignon is a bit like ‘sauvage’, perhaps it was originally a wild grape? But isn’t that true of every other Vitis vinifera variety?
Or: in the 18th century Cabernet Sauvignon used to be known in Bordeaux as Petite Vidure; perhaps it took its name from the hardness of its wood (vigne dure = vidure)? Is there then a link with Carmenère, another historic Bordeaux variety, which used to be known as Grande Vidure?
The truth was revealed by DNA fingerprinting at the University of California at Davis in 1996: Cabernet Sauvignon is a chance crossing of Cabernet Franc and Sauvignon Blanc. The clue, ironically enough, was there in the name all along – and in the flavour. With the benefit of hindsight, how did we miss the simple fact that it tastes like both its parents? (Think of the green leafiness of unripe Cabernet Sauvignon, and the leafiness of Sauvignon Blanc.) We may never know when the crossing of the two occurred, but when the great wine estates of the Médoc were planted in the 18th century by Bordeaux’s newly rich noblesse de la robe, Cabernet Sauvignon was established enough to form a major part of the blend for red Bordeaux and has remained so ever since.
Cabernet Sauvignon, incidentally, is a half-sibling of Merlot, which is in turn a half-sibling of Malbec. But then Sauvignon Blanc is related to Chenin and Savagnin – so Cabernet is also related to them. Which all makes Bordeaux a far more promiscuous place than anyone dared to imagine.
Entrance to the ultra-modern chai at Château Lafite-Rothschild in Pauillac. The 1980s saw a building boom in Bordeaux, with cranes and diggers moving into what seemed like every second property. It was funded by steeply rising prices and a series of good vintages, plus increased demand for fine wine all over the world. The 90s were more of a challenge, but prices for top Bordeaux in the 21st century have gone mad.
A glimpse of history – bottles dating back to 1848 in the cellar at Château Margaux. Red Bordeaux is one of the world’s great classic wine styles, largely because of its phenomenal ability to age. Amazingly these bottles could still taste good.
Traditional fining of red wines uses egg whites – six per barrique here at Château Léoville-Barton. In Bordeaux, Spain and Portugal the yolks are used for sticky yellow cakes. In Bordeaux, these are called cannelés girondins. Very fattening.
The fact that just about every wine country in the world grows Cabernet Sauvignon is inclined to make us take it for granted. If it grows everywhere, the logic goes, it must be easy to grow, making few demands on the knowledge or skill of the grower. It is true that it is less fussy about climate and soil than many varieties, is relatively disease-resistant and succeeds in producing wine that is recognizably Cabernet no matter where it is planted. But there are only a few places in the world where varietal Cabernet by itself is as good as or better than a blend. As one Australian winemaker memorably puts it: ‘Bordeaux’s greatest coup was in convincing the rest of the world that great red Bordeaux is pure Cabernet.’ In other words, you guys plant pure Cabernet, then realize how much better our blends in Bordeaux are.
Distinguishing between the importance of climate and that of soil is always difficult, but seems more so with Cabernet Sauvignon precisely because at most quality levels it reflects its soil less than some grapes. In Bordeaux, soil type has traditionally determined what is planted where, but it is ultimately the temperature of the soil that is crucial; in Australia and California, more emphasis is given to climatic factors. But to quote Patrick Campbell, founder of Laurel Glen Winery in California’s Sonoma Valley: ‘Cabernet Sauvignon at the top level should speak of a site. That may not be possible or even necessary at lower levels, but at the top of the pyramid, Cabernet must be from somewhere’ and must taste not just of its variety, but of its ‘place’ as well.
Cabernet Sauvignon needs warmth to ripen. It needs a warmer climate than Pinot Noir, or it will turn out green and sappy, with a flavour of green capsicum peppers; too much warmth, however, turns it soft and jammy, with a flavour of baked blackcurrants. Methoxypyrazines, the odour compounds that give Cabernet Sauvignon the green, herbaceous part of its flavour profile, are destroyed by sunlight as the grapes ripen; the detection threshold on the palate is 2ng/l. In warmer climates levels can fall from around 30ng/l at véraison to 1ng/l at picking.
Excessive green, vegetal flavours have been the bane of many regions which hoped their cool climates would give them Cabernets of Médoc-like elegance. In California these flavours used to be known as ‘Monterey veggies’. The Monterey region is both cool and windy, and since vines shut down in high winds, eliminating excess vegetal flavours in Monterey Cabernet is very difficult, even with leaf removal. If you want to grow Cabernet in Monterey, you have to pick a warm spot. It is becoming clear that Russian River, too, is on the cool side for Cabernet.
Cutting-edge winery architecture at Viña Almaviva, a joint venture between Concha y Toro and the late Baroness Philippine de Rothschild of Bordeaux in Chile’s Maipo Valley. Outside investment and know-how – and a swanky name – equal premium prices. Luckily, in this instance, they make good wine as well – but quite a few such grandiose schemes deliver too much sizzle and not enough steak.
The minty flavour sometimes found in Cabernet Sauvignon, particularly in Margaret River and Coonawarra in Australia, and in Washington State may be the result of a marginally cool climate. But soil could also be a factor. It crops up occasionally in Pauillac, for example, but not in Margaux. Personally, I love it.
Minty flavour, however, is known to derive from the proximity of eucalyptus trees. They’re very insidious: the oils vaporize and get on to the grapes. In South Australia’s Yarra Valley, vines within 50m (164ft) of eucalypts have been shown to have 15.5 micrograms per litre of eucalpytol (alias 1,8-cinceole) in the finished wine; a microgram is one-millionth of a gram. Vines between 50 and 175m (164–574ft) away had just 0.1 micrograms per litre. It’s only found in red wines, because reds are fermented with the grape skins; and picking grapes by hand, and therefore keeping leaves out of the fermentation vat, significantly reduces the flavour. Producers in most countries can fell eucalypts if they’re tainting the wine; in Australia it’s illegal to fell native trees. If you don’t like the taste, move the vineyard.
The fame of Cabernet Sauvignon was originally based on the gravel soils of Bordeaux’s Médoc and Graves: they produced the wines that made the rest of the world want the vine. Cabernet Sauvignon likes gravel simply because it is warm. It drains well, warms up quickly in spring, and holds the heat well. All these factors suit this late budding, late ripening variety because they help to coax the grapes to ripeness in the marginal climate of somewhere like the Médoc. That is not to say that there are no spots in Bordeaux’s St-Émilion, or even Pomerol, where Cabernet might thrive. But take gravel away from Bordeaux and you wouldn’t have much Cabernet: the more clayey or limestone soils of St-Émilion and Pomerol are generally too cool. Nevertheless, in the 1960s until the mid-1970s the bureaucrats made it obligatory to plant Cabernet Sauvignon in St-Émilion – and, what was more, plant high-yielding clones on vigorous SO4 rootstocks. The results, says Stephan von Neipperg of Château Canon-la-Gaffelière, were ‘fine if you wanted to make cola’. Rum and Cabernet, anyone?
Elsewhere, where the climate is warmer, gravel per se seems to be less crucial than soil that is well drained and of poor potential vigour. In Coonawarra, South Australia, there is terra rossa over limestone, but in the Rutherford and Oakville areas of California’s Napa Valley the vine thrives on alluvial soil.
The 1970s clones that were developed for high yields – and which were often responsible for giving green, thin, herbaceous flavours to the wine – are increasingly being uprooted and replaced with newer, better ones. However, these new virus-free clones also inevitably give higher yields.
In Bordeaux the Classed Growth châteaux may achieve 60hl/ha – the legal maximum is 50hl/ha, but there is also the plafond limite de classement, a legal dodge that enables appellation contrôlée regions to increase their yields in prolific years. Most years are now prolific enough to qualify. To keep yields down, green harvesting is usually necessary – chopping off excess clusters at véraison – and selection for the grand vin will be stringent or not according to the producer. Low yields, however, are not an end in themselves. Concentration is good, but too much becomes lack of balance. Bordeaux has received plenty of stick in recent years for copying Napa.
Cabernet Sauvignon’s high ratio of pip to pulp – almost 1:12, compared to Sémillon’s 1:25 – and its high phenolic content mean that it can withstand both fairly high temperatures at fermentation, and long maceration. Fermentation temperatures of up to 30°C (86°F) are usual, and in Bordeaux, a maceration of three weeks was traditional because the cellar staff used to take the opportunity to shut the doors and go hunting. Where softer, earlier drinking wines are the aim, the maceration may only be a few days. In Australia and other New World countries, carbonic maceration has sometimes been used to produce soft, juicy wines.
The Coonawarra in South Australia has proven to be particularly suitable to Cabernet Sauvignon. The vines are on a ridge of terra rossa soil over thick, free-draining limestone – perfect in Coonawara’s cool, wet conditions.
The wine has a startling affinity with new oak, blending its blackcurrant flavours brilliantly with the vanilla and toasty spice of the barrels. The success of Cabernet in new French oak made the 225-litre barrique Bordelais effectively the standard size wine barrel throughout the world.
In Australia, California and elsewhere, American oak, which gives a more assertively vanilla flavour, may also be used; but winemakers’ sensitivity to the risk of over-oaking is increasingly leading them to use a mix of French and American, or a mix of new and used barrels. American oak can be processed like French oak, giving it subtler flavours, and different types of American oak are being identified: Oregon oak, for example, is more powerful in flavour than that from Missouri, Pennsylvania or Virginia.
THE BORDEAUX BLEND
Cabernet Sauvignon is almost never bottled as a varietal wine in Bordeaux: it usually lacks enough flesh in the middle palate, and needs its somewhat lean profile filled out with the fatter Merlot and the perfumed, fruity Cabernet Franc. This is the classic blend for red Bordeaux. Not that there’s a standard recipe: each château has its own balance of vines, depending on its soil and climate, and its grand vin may or may not reflect that balance exactly.
With such a fickle climate, including the threats of both frosts and rains at vintage time, much depends in Bordeaux on the year. The reason that the region evolved its particular mix of grapes was that not every vine could be relied upon to ripen every year. Growing several varieties means that if one variety is hit by late frost, another may survive to give you a crop. If September storms arrive, at least some varieties may be ripe enough to pick early.
Such pragmatism may not be necessary in warmer sites like the northern part of the Napa Valley, or South Australia’s Barossa or McLaren Vale. Here varietal Cabernet can be very successful – though even so it is not uncommon for a touch of Merlot to be added to tweak the final flavour. In cooler climates like New Zealand, Cabernet blends are usually more successful than varietal Cabernet Sauvignons.
In Bordeaux Petit Verdot and Malbec may also be added, though Carmenère, which was important in Bordeaux before phylloxera, is now hardly grown there. Malbec is grown patchily – there’s some in Fronsac and Bourg – and the lighter soil of Margaux means that a small percentage of Petit Verdot is often added there for its dark colour and violet perfume. Petit Verdot is also grown in corners of Australia, California, Virginia, New Zealand and Spain for blending or as a varietal.
Further back in history the classic Bordeaux blend included Syrah, which might have been grown either in Bordeaux or in the Rhône Valley. This is echoed today in the classic Australian red blend of Cabernet and Shiraz; but Cabernet may be blended in other countries with almost every imaginable red grape. Tuscany, for instance, has made a notable success of blending it with Sangiovese, while the regions of Cataluña and Navarra in northern Spain make very good Cabernet-Tempranillo blends.
Now that Bordeaux can make wines of New World richness, and the New World is showing that its wines have structure and longevity, it is becoming increasingly difficult to ascribe particular flavour profiles to particular places. Styles can be defined as much by individual winemakers and individual sites as by regions. Christian Seely of Château Pichon Baron maintains that Pauillac is the only place in the world where Cabernet Sauvignon doesn’t simply taste of itself. He may be biased – some leading Napa or Coonawarra producers might beg to differ – but he may also have a point.
Cabernet Sauvignon is not the most widely planted grape in Bordeaux: that honour goes to Merlot. Back in the 19th century, Cabernet’s popularity was increasing rapidly: growers loved its resistance to rot (its thick skins and loose clusters help here) as well as its tannic structure, acidity and good flavours. But the 1852 oidium epidemic in Bordeaux revealed its great susceptibility to that disease. Growers turned to Merlot instead, and confined Cabernet to the gravel outcrops of the Médoc and Graves. But where there is less gravel – in the northern part of the Médoc, for example – Cabernet can be too austere for fun, never mind for fashion, and needs plenty of Merlot to fatten it up. In St-Émilion it is a minority grape, with Cabernet Franc and Merlot taking over; and in Pomerol’s clay it is hardly found at all.
Even in its most favoured spots, Cabernet Sauvignon will not produce sensational wines every year, though with global warming, the number of years it produces poor wine is now far outweighed by the number of good to excellent years. There’s no doubt that most of the longest-lived red Bordeaux have a high proportion of Cabernet Sauvignon in their blend, though it’s worth remembering that even in the Médoc and Graves, where Cabernet Sauvignon is likely to be the biggest single variety in the blend at the top châteaux, it may still be in a minority against the various other varieties in the blend.
Cabernet’s style in the Médoc varies from the mineral austerity of St-Estèphe through violet-scented intensity in Margaux, classic lead pencils and blackcurrant in Pauillac, cedar and cigar boxes in St-Julien, softer and rich in Moulis and somewhat earthy in Listrac and the northern Médoc to minerally again in Pessac-Léognan. Lesser regions like the southern Graves produce good blackcurrant flavours, without the intensity of the best sites.
Cabernet Sauvignon revels in well-drained stony soil and all the best Médoc vineyards are planted on deep gravel beds. This is a Cabernet Sauvignon vine at Château Léoville-Barton in St-Julien.
Cabernet Sauvignon is grown in the Southwest for lookalike red Bordeaux wines, and it produces its customary blackcurrant fruit, but in a lighter style than the best of Bordeaux can offer. These pruned Cabernet Sauvignon wines are at Ch. Léoville-Barton, in St-Julien, a Bordeaux village famed for the balance and ageability of its red wines due to its deep beds of gravelly soil sitting on the edge of the Gironde Estuary.
Cabernet Sauvignon in Italy is no longer the dangerous interloper it was once perceived to be. Winemakers have worked with it, learnt about it – and gone on to learn more about their native grape varieties. Cabernet on its own is no longer the first choice for anyone wanting to make serious wines. The grape was present in Italy long before Italy was a single country. It arrived in Piedmont in 1820 and is still grown there, even, it is said, being introduced into Barolo in significant proportions. Such a thing would of course be illegal for DOCG Barolo, but is believed to improve the colour and make the wine fruitier – both of which aims can be hard to achieve with Nebbiolo.
Château Montrose
When tasters talk of the classic flavours of red Bordeaux, the blackcurrant, the cedar wood and pencil shavings and the tannnic grip, Château Montrose in St-Estèphe fits the bill perfectly.
Château Léoville-las-Cases
A super-expensive Second Growth St-Julien château, where the aim is to produce super-concentrated wine without losing the haunting blackcurrant and cedar wood beauty of top Bordeaux.
Isole e Olena
In 1988 Chianti Classico producer Paolo de Marchi at Isole e Olena was one of the first in Tuscany to experiment with planting classic French grapes like Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah.
Legal blends of Cabernet and Nebbiolo take in the DOCs of Langhe or Monferrato; Cabernet and Barbera also blend well, with or without the addition of Nebbiolo, though the addition of two high tannin grapes to the high-acid Barbera can require the use of some new wood to add some sweet spice.
Piedmontese varietal Cabernets range from very good to excellent, but seem to need the best vineyard sites.
Cabernet’s history in Tuscany has been still more controversial (apart from in Carmignano, where it has been part of the DOC blend since 1975), partly because of the so-called super-Tuscans – top-class wines which deliberately went outside the DOC system, often in order to add Cabernet, or by making Cabernet as a varietal. Cabernet in Tuscany has a beautiful deep blackcurrant and black cherry sweetness, and retains its acidity even when the alcohol reaches 14 per cent, as it can. The marriage of Cabernet and Sangiovese has also proved superbly fruitful; it is up to the winemaker to find a balance between the assertive Cabernet and the less dramatic Sangiovese.
Cabernet Sauvignon has long been conspicuous in Lombardy, where it is often blended with Merlot. Bordeaux-style blends can also be found in Emilia-Romagna, the Veneto, Friuli-Venezia Giulia and, to a lesser extent, the Alto Adige and Trentino. Teroldego and the Valpolicella grapes are other blending partners in their respective regions. Cabernet Sauvignon usually suffers from insufficient ripeness in the Alto Adige and Trentino – the dreaded green bean flavour again – particularly when it is trained on high pergolas and overproduces, as it usually is and does. Better clones, Guyot-trained, can help this problem, but so can growing the earlier-ripening Cabernet Franc instead of Cabernet Sauvignon.
In the South of Italy, Cabernet is blended with every conceivable red grape: Gaglioppo in Calabria; Merlot and Aglianico in Campania; Nero d’Avola in Sicily; and Cannonau and Carignano in Sardinia.
Nearly every region of Spain has some Cabernet Sauvignon planted, though often only as an experiment. But Cabernet experiments have a habit of turning out well. It has already shown it can produce good varietals in Penedès, and it was introduced to Rioja in the mid-19th century by the Marqués de Riscal. There are currently some 70ha (173 acres) planted there, and there are moves to get it added to the list of approved varieties for Rioja. It is already being used at many bodegas, but is it a cuckoo in the nest? It seems to have less pronounced tannins in Rioja than in most places, and in cooler spots in the region, like Haro, it doesn’t ripen well, and still only has experimental status there, so I don’t think we need to worry too much. It has had more of an effect in Navarra and Ribera del Duero.
Leap of faith
Back in 1976 there was a tasting in Paris of top French wines against the best of their counterparts from California. It was organized by wine merchant Steven Spurrier, and its effect was electric. Known as the Judgment of Paris tasting, it awarded top place among the reds to Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars 1973 Cabernet Sauvignon. This Paris triumph made the cover of Time magazine; there is now a bottle of Stag’s Leap 1973 in the Smithsonian Institute.
Warren Winiarski (left), founder and until recently the owner of Stag’s Leap, planted his Cabernet vines in 1970, after years of exploring the Napa Valley and noting where the vegetation changed, where there was frost damage, and what the growing conditions were – and this was an unfashionable attitude at the time in California. The emphasis then was on grape variety, not place. Winiarski’s first career was teaching political theory at the University of Chicago. His fascination with wine began when a friend brought a bottle of wine to lunch – it came from the East Coast and was made from hybrid grapes. Eventually Winiarski and his wife decided to make wine themselves, and drove across the desert to California..
Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars
S.L.V. stands for Stag’s Leap Vineyards – the original estate vineyard planted in 1970. The 1973 Cabernet which won the Judgment of Paris tasting (see above) was from this vineyard.
The bargain red wine of the 1980s, Bulgarian Cabernet Sauvignon has lost popularity to fruitier, softer versions from Australia and Chile. Cabernet is widely grown in Hungary, Moldova, Romania, Croatia, Slovenia and throughout the former Eastern Bloc, and individual examples can be attractive, particularly where Western winemaking techniques are available. It is grown on a small scale in Austria, but seldom ripens well there, and some growers are replacing it with Merlot. It is successful in Greece, Turkey and Israel, and forms part of the blend at several Lebanese wineries.
The appearance of a new biotype of phylloxera in California in the 1980s, and the subsequent replanting of many vineyards, did not bring about the reduction in the amount of Cabernet Sauvignon, and the increase in other varieties that some people hoped for. Quite the reverse, in fact: Cabernet’s acreage more than doubled between 1988 and 1998. In the Napa Valley north of Yountville the vineyards are almost solidly Cabernet Sauvignon now, with some Cabernet Franc and Merlot: there is very little Chardonnay or Sauvignon Blanc still grown in this part. The smaller hillside regions like Mount Veeder, Howell Mountain, Diamond Mountain and Spring Mountain, with their slow-aging, tightly structured styles of wine, are more Cabernet-dominated than before.
Sonoma’s leading Cabernet region, Alexander Valley, has now been replanted with better clones that are less likely to give green, herbaceous flavours, and more Merlot and Cabernet Franc have been planted. But for every producer experimenting with blends of Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Malbec or Petit Verdot, there is likely to be another increasing the proportion of Cabernet Sauvignon to emphasize the strong character it has here.
Growers have generally learnt to make better balanced wines, with the fashion for extremely long hang times now mercifully waning – for some producers, anyway. Dry Creek Valley, Sonoma Mountain and Sonoma Valley are up-and-coming regions, and Mendocino County is showing great promise. Further south, Paso Robles in San Luis Obispo County, Santa Cruz Mountain and Monterey’s Carmel Valley have only small amounts of Cabernet, but are making some stylish wines. Of the more established regions, Stags Leap District makes supple, well-structured, black cherry wines, and warmer Oakville and Rutherford are more blackcurrants and plums, richer and with firmer, dusty tannins.
The main stylistic difference in California is between hillside and valley floor wines. Hillsides, with their thinner soil, give lower yields (1–2 tons per acre, compared to 4–8 on the valley floors). The berries are smaller, and flavours are more austere and intense, chewier and less opulent, in a slow-maturing, Bordeaux style. But there are exceptions, notably the valley-floor-grown Opus One, with its Bordeaux-style restraint.
Californian Cabernets, especially from Napa, where the influence of Robert Parker has focused growers on making super-ripe, super-rich, super-polished reds, can reach over 15 per cent and are seldom below 14 per cent. They argue that Bordeaux regularly hits 14 per cent nowadays, too: true, but the greater acidity of Bordeaux makes for more balanced, fresher wines. Napa growers have a horror of anything that could be construed as ‘green’, and if that means making wines that taste of prunes and raisins, then so be it. Their wines may be textbook-perfect, but they often reflect their hang-time and their additions in the winery – routinely, acid and extra tannins – more than their terroir.
Cabernet Sauvignon could have greater long-term potential here in Washington State even than Merlot – particularly now that better vineyard management is beginning to reduce its unripe green flavours. It has now overtaken Merlot as the state’s Number One red variety, even though Merlot has proved faster at showing its worth. To thrive Cabernet needs the hottest sites: the Yakima Valley is generally on the cool side, and warmer parts of the Columbia Valley are more suitable. Its great advantage, as far as the growers are concerned, is its resistance to winter cold. Cabernet’s trademark in Washington State is its forthright fruit, with more freshness than Californian examples, and it can make early-drinking styles – though there is an increasing number of growers who are producing impressively dark, brooding reds.
The owners of Screaming Eagle in the Napa Valley (above) aim to make California’s greatest wine, bar none. With just 200 cases of intensely concentrated Cabernet made each year, few people will ever have the chance to judge if they’re succeeding. Not surprisingly, the wine has cult status.
There are small quantities of Cabernet Sauvignon planted in Oregon, mostly in the Umpqua and Rogue Valleys; other states, including Texas and Arizona, also grow it. Its toughness in the face of cold winters makes it attractive to Canadian growers with Southern British Columbia having the most success.
Coonawarra led the way in the 1970s with blackcurrant and mint fruit and fine structure, though Cabernet’s reputation is now based as much on the black-fruited, dustily herby and tightly structured wines of Margaret River, the balance and elegance of Yarra Valley, the sweet, focused fruit of Clare Valley and the rich, heavy wines of Barossa and McLaren Vale.
All these areas, and various other subzones too, make individual and at times exceptional Cabernets that truly reflect regional characteristics, and this has given rise to the latest wave – trying to express actual vineyard character; much more enjoyable than the unlamented slavish chase after a dense, choking, 100-pointer style.
At the less expensive end there are abundant, ripe-fruited examples blended from different regions and even between states. Plantings are still rising, although at about one-sixth of the rate of Shiraz.
Hawkes Bay is the key region here. The ripest Cabernet Sauvignons come from this climatically diverse North Island region, though often still retain a green flavour as a reminder of its relatively cool climate. This is exacerbated by high yields: the fertile alluvial soil of much of the flat land means vigorous vines. Better-adapted rootstocks and lower yields can help produce riper fruit that emphasizes cassis flavours; canopy management has already made big improvements to ripeness; and development of warm gravel beds in areas like Gimblett Gravels has produced exciting Cabernet results. Waiheke Island, in Auckland, also has some impressive wines. Even so, blends with Merlot are nearly always more interesting than pure Cabernet Sauvignon, particularly when Merlot dominates.
Not surprisingly, Cabernet Sauvignon is found in just about every wine country in Central and South America. In Mexico, the wines can be earthy and four-square; in Uruguay, they can have nicely balanced blackberry fruit. Brazil has a few successes in the far south. In Argentina Cabernet is typically blended with Malbec, especially at the top end but can excel on its own. These premium wines, full of tobacco and leathery fruit at their best, have considerable aging potential. Early-drinking wines tend to have sweeter, lighter fruit.
In Chile, climate is the main factor in determining what gets planted where, though soil is increasingly important and terroir is the new buzzword. Maipo, where a lot of the eucalyptus trees have been felled, is making much less minty Cabernet than before; there is still that piercing blackcurrant fruit to the wines but with an increasingly long-lived structure. Aconcagua wines are fairly solid, closed in but still sweet and ripe at heart. Warmer Curico gives richer, softer Cabernets, and Colchagua generally gives fast-developing wines with soft tannins, sweet fruit and less acidity. As in Argentina high yields and over-oaking can be a problem, but Chilean Cabernet has the potential to be a world-beater.
Cabernet Sauvignon from new clones, coming on stream in the vineyards in the mid-1990s, has ripe, sweet fruit in place of the high acidity and unripe herbaceous notes of the old, virused clones. Later picking, and better winemaking which avoids volatility, are also crucial. Location is now a major factor in style: Constantia Cabernet has minty, herbal flavours to Stellenbosch’s structure and ripe fruit weight. A blend of the two might be about right. The west coast north of Cape Town, cooled by coastal breezes, is an interesting new region.
China is the big story. She is the fastest-growing wine producer in the world, with Cabernet Sauvignon regarded as the star variety. According to latest available statistics, China already has the world’s largest Cabernet Sauvignon plantings. Inland regions like Ningxia look more exciting than coastal Shandong and each vintage brings an increased flow of tasty, characterful wines.
Japan and India make occasional decent examples, but the climatic conditions in these countries don’t generally favour making big, structured reds.
Shafer
Napa is one of the world’s classic Cabernet Sauvignon regions, and Stags Leap District produces its supplest wines. This is Shafer’s top Cabernet wine, with the capacity to age for 20 years or more.
Petaluma
Petaluma makes a classic Coonawarra wine, elegant and restrained, but with ageability firmly to the fore. The wine is predominantly Cabernet Sauvignon, with some softening Merlot blended in.
Te Mata
One of New Zealand’s top reds, this Hawkes Bay blend adds Merlot and Cabernet Franc to a backbone of Cabernet Sauvignon in true Bordeaux style and greatly improves with age.
Montes
Montes have long championed Cabernet Sauvignon in Chile’s Colchagua Valley, in particular planting the challenging Apalta slopes. This is 80% Cabernet Sauvignon, blended with Merlot and Cabernet Franc.
Cabernet Sauvignon makes wines that can shine at a century old, yet it can also make delightful wine that is unbeatable a mere six months after vintage. Bordeaux is where Cabernet Sauvignon first showed what it could do, in terms of both flavour and longevity. Questions are sometimes raised about the aging ability of the currently fashionable richer, fleshier style of red Bordeaux. The 1982 vintage, the first in this style, has aged unpredictably, as have the 1989 and 1990, with some leading wines fading surprisingly quickly but then regaining richness and structure for no apparent reason except that Cabernet is a grape that is determined to age well if it can. The top 1982s are still inspiring wines. It still seems fair to say that top red Bordeaux needs at least 10 years to come round, and in a good vintage should last two or three decades longer. French practice is to drink them at a few years old. Although top Italian and Spanish Cabernets could easily take 10 years of aging, most will also be consumed at only a few years old.
Cabernet changes so much in bottle that it would be a shame to forget the pleasures of mature wine. But it would also be a shame to forgo the pleasures of young Cabernet. The top Cabernets of Australia need around 10 years, but most Aussie Cabs are excellent at five years old, many peak at only two to three years, some last for twenty. Top Californian vintages like 2006 or 2012 can last for two, perhaps three decades, but since so much Californian Cab is drunk on release without any further aging, it isn’t surprising to find that, below the top level, most are ready at two to three years old. South American Cabernets – especially Chilean examples – are bursting with flavour at only a couple of years old though they definitely do age. South African examples, though softer and riper than they used to be, still often need six to eight years. New Zealand Cabernets are usually ready quite young but do age well, with sweet blackcurrant fruit, even if they rarely lose their streak of leafy greenness.
There is no mistaking the blackcurrant scent of Cabernet. Young wines taste of black cherry and blackcurrant; mature wines add the classic nose of pencil shavings, cedar and cigar boxes.
At lower ripeness levels Cabernet exhibits a telltale greenness, a green bell pepper nose that at its worst is raw and vegetal. It is a flavour winemakers try to avoid. More pleasant tastes and smells are those of tobacco, mint and eucalyptus, and fruits like blackberry and black cherry; blackcurrant is generally present, even in less than super-ripe examples, though less so in Bordeaux and Napa. Overripe Cabernet goes jammy-tasting – stewed prunes and dates at worst. Some growers like to pick a mixture of slightly underripe, perfectly ripe and slightly overripe grapes, believing that the combination of all these flavours gives extra complexity. Others say no, the ideal is to pick everything at optimum ripeness: that way the grape tastes most like itself.
New World examples, particularly at the less expensive end, show sweeter fruit than Bordeaux of equivalent quality: they are juicier and more forward and, at lower price levels, more attractive. Basic Bordeaux Rouge, regardless of how much Cabernet Sauvignon it contains, is more likely to emphasize the austerity of the style over the fruit.
Harlan Estate is one of the original ‘cult’ red wines in Napa Valley, being founded in 1988, but the vineyard in the hills above Oakville has proved its worth and the Cabernet Sauvignon-based red is regularly one of the deepest but most balanced and interesting of Napa Cabs. Château Mouton-Rothschild is one of Bordeaux’s most famous reds based on the almost sensual texture and flavour the estate manages to coax from its Cabernet Sauvignon wines. They were also the partners, with Robert Mondavi, in the original Napa–Bordeaux joint venture, Opus One.
All over the world Cabernet Sauvignon makes full-flavoured, reliable reds: the ideal food wine. Classic combinations include cru classé Pauillac with roast milk-fed lamb; super-Tuscans with bistecca alla fiorentina; softer, riper New World Cabernet Sauvignons with roast turkey or goose. Cabernet Sauvignon seems to have a particular affinity for lamb, but it partners all plain roast or grilled meats and game well and would be an excellent choice for many sauced meat dishes such as steak and kidney pie, beef stews, rabbit stew and any substantial dishes made with mushrooms.
Synonyms & local names
France’s many historical synonyms include Petite Vidure and Bidure.
Best producers
FRANCE/Bordeaux Calon-Ségur, Dom. de Chevalier, Cos d’Estournel, Ducru-Beaucaillou, Grand-Puy-Lacoste, Gruaud-Larose, Haut-Brion, Lafite-Rothschild, Lagrange, Latour, Léoville-Barton, Léoville-Las-Cases, Léoville-Poyferré, Lynch-Bages, Ch. Margaux, Montrose, Mouton-Rothschild, Pichon-Longueville, Pichon-Longueville-Comtesse de Lalande, Pontet-Canet, Rauzan-Ségla; Other La Grange des Pères, Tour des Gendres, Trévallon, Verdots.
ITALY Antinori, Gaja, Isole e Olena, Lageder, Le Macchiole, Ornellaia, San Leonardo, Sassicaia, Tasca d’Almerita, Tua Rita.
SPAIN Abadía Retuerta, Blecua, Enate, Jané Ventura, Marqués de Griñon, Torres.
PORTUGAL Esporão.
USA/California Araujo, Beringer, Bryant Family, Buccella, Cakebread, Caymus, Chimney Rock, Corison, Dalla Valle, Diamond Creek, Dominus, Dunn, Grace Family, Harlan, Hartwell, La Jota, Ladera, Laurel Glen, Long Meadow Ranch, Peter Michael, Miner Family, Mondavi, Newton, Oakville Ranch, Joseph Phelps, Ridge, St Supery, Screaming Eagle, Shafer, Silver Oak, Spottswoode, Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars, Terra Valentine, Titus, Viader;
Washington State Andrew Will, Cadence, Corliss, DeLille, Dunham, Fidelitas, Hedges, Januik, Leonetti, Quilceda Creek, Three Rivers, Woodward Canyon.
SOUTH AMERICA Almaviva, Altair, Aristos, Atamisque, Carmen, Catena Zapata, Cobos, Concha y Toro, Errázuriz, Haras de Pirque, Kaiken, Mendel, Santa Rita, Terrazas de Los Andes, Miguel Torres.
AUSTRALIA Tim Adams, Balnaves, Cape Mentelle, Cullen, Forest Hill, Fraser Gallop, Giaconda, Grosset, Hardys, Henschke, Houghton, Howard Park, Katnook, Leasingham, Leeuwin, Majella, Moss Wood, Mount Mary, Parker, Penfolds (Bin 707, Bin 169), Penley, Vasse Felix, Voyager, Wendouree, The Willows, Wirra Wirra, Woodlands, Wynns, Xanadu, Zema.
NEW ZEALAND Craggy Range, Esk Valley, Man O’War, Stonyridge, Te Mata, Trinity Hill, Vidal, Villa Maria.
SOUTH AFRICA Beyerskloof, Boekenhoutskloof, Buitenverwachtung, de Toren, de Trafford, Neil Ellis, Grangehurst, Jordan, Kanonkop, Le Riche, Meerlust, Rustenberg, Saxenburg, Thelema, Vergelegen, Waterford.
Ten Bordeaux Classed Growths
Domaine de Chevalier Pessac-Léognan
Ch. Ferrière Margaux
Ch. Haut-Bailly Pessac-Léognan
Ch. Lagrange St-Julien
Ch. La Lagune Haut-Médoc
Ch. Langoa-Barton St-Julien
Ch. Léoville-Poyferré St-Julien
La Mission-Haut-Brion Pessac-Léognan
Ch. Montrose St-Estèphe
Ch Palmer Margaux
Ch. d’Angludet Margaux
Ch. Batailley Pauillac
Ch. Chasse-Spleen Moulis
Ch. La Gurgue Margaux
Ch. Labégorce-Zédé Margaux
Ch. Monbrison Margaux
Ch. Pibran Pauillac
Ch. Potensac Médoc
Ch. Poujeaux Moulis
Ch. Sociando-Mallet Haut-Médoc
Andrew Will Klipsun Cabernet Sauvignon (USA)
Balnaves Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon (Australia)
Catena Alta Cabernet Sauvignon (Argentina)
Chateau Ste Michelle Col Solare (Washington State)
Corison Cabernet Sauvignon (California)
Diamond Creek Cabernet Sauvignon(California)
Errazuriz Viña Chadwick (Chile)
Grosset Gaia (Australia)
Hedges Family Estate Red Mountain (Washington State)
Jordan Cabernet Sauvignon (South Africa)
Le Riche Auction Reserve (South Africa)
Ridge Monte Bello (California)
Sandalford Cabernet Sauvignon (Australia)
Santa Rita Casa Real (Chile)
Tim Adams Clare Valley Cabernet (Australia)
Valdivieso Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon (Chile)
Vasse Felix Cabernet Sauvignon (Australia)
Vergelegen Vergelegen Red (South Africa)
Vistalba Tomero (Argentina)
Wynns Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon (Australia)
Cabernet Sauvignon’s small berries can make reds soft and fruity enough to enjoy at one to two years old, as well as the majority of the world’s genuine long-distance wines.
Cabernet Sauvignon is potentially one of the longest lasting of red grapes, but much depends on the producer.
2009 was an excellent vintage throughout the Médoc. It was particularly strong in St-Julien, Pauillac and St-Estèphe.
2009 was a very good year. A cool summer produced wines of balance, concentration and a fresh acidity that will ensure long life.
A relatively cool year for Coonawarra, one of the world’s classic Cabernet regions. The wines have great intensity and dark, black fruit.
Found in the Rosal valley in Rías Baixas, northwest Spain, and to a much lesser extent in Portugal, this has largely been abandoned by growers in favour of Albariño, which is easier to grow and gratifyingly fashionable. But Caíño Blanco has its fans: its tropical aromas, density of flavour, creamy texture and good structure mean that some think it’s more interesting than Albariño. It transmits its terroir more faithfully than Albariño, but gives less juice, which immediately makes it less rewarding, and is susceptible to mildew and botrytis; it also ripens late. Best producer: Terras Gauda.
A recent French crossing of Grenache and Malbec with good colour and body, enticing loganberry fruit but a slight tendency to volatility. It is attracting attention in South America and Portugal, among others.
A synonym for Nero d’Avola, see here.
The name, in Mallorcan dialect, means ‘Black’; sadly unimaginative, but clear. Its wines are often not that dark in colour, however, and it is often blended with other local varieties, including Manto Negro for fruit, or Fogoneu, with which it is often co-planted. Acidity and alcohol are seldom high, but the wines can be appealingly perfumed at their best.
Portuguese grape with umpteen synonyms, but not much variety. It’s mostly found in Bairrada, where it makes quite soft, silky reds. Castelão de Nosso, Castelão Nacional, Vide Prete and Negro Mouro are all Camarate.
A perfumed red grape that seems to have been the main constituent of Chianti until the late 19th century, and thereafter was used for softening the astringency of Sangiovese. It is no longer a required part of the Chianti blend, and has been in decline since the onset of phylloxera, when it proved a tricky vine to graft. The available clones have also been generally poor, though there have been moves to remedy this. Some Tuscan growers still treasure their Canaiolo, and blend it with Sangiovese. There is some in Lazio, the Marche and Sardinia, and a white version, Canaiolo Bianco, in Umbria, alias Drupeggio, is a different vine.
The Sardinian name for Garnacha Tinta (see here). In Sardinia it gives powerful, often slightly earthy, toffeeish table wines and some exciting, rich fortified wines.
A hot climate vine that probably did more than another other grape to fill Europe’s wine lake in the late 20th century, Carignan is now in decline. It still covers large tracts of Languedoc-Roussillon, producing yields of up to 200hl/ha with ease. The wine has quite dark colour, loads of tannin and acidity, plenty of astringency, and as a bulk wine gives very little pleasure. But it has shown itself to be eminently suitable for vinifying by the Beaujolais method of carbonic maceration when the colour deepens, the astringency softens and a rustic but attractive fruit and perfume appear out of nowhere. Blend this with Grenache or Syrah and good wine can result.
Only in exceptional sites, with first-class exposure and good drainage, and with very good winemaking can it produce fine wine on its own. However, such wines do exist, both in the south of France, especially Corbières, and elsewhere. Indeed, some Languedoc-Roussillon producers call Carignan ‘our Pinot’. When Carignan makes a serious wine, yields are low and the vines are usually old – certainly 50 years or more. It can also make attractive herb-streaked rosés.
Outside Languedoc-Roussillon it is found in the southern Rhône, but it cannot travel too far because, being both late budding and late ripening, it needs a warm climate to ripen. It is also susceptible to rot and both kinds of mildew. There is also a white version, Carignan Blanc, found in Languedoc-Roussillon.
In Italy it is found as Carignano, especially in Sardinia, but also in Lazio. In Spain it is called Cariñena, and in fact it originated in Aragon. Today, however, it plays only a small part in Cariñena, the wine named after it. Instead it is mostly found in Cataluña, especially in Ampurdán-Costa Brava, Priorat and Tarragona. Under its alternative name of Mazuelo it may be a small part of the Rioja blend, and is valued for the very acidity that is not relished in the Languedoc. Its colour and tannin are also useful in Rioja.
California can produce some very good Carignane, as it is called here, but it can also produce high-yielding wine quite as dreadful as any other. Nearly all the vines are old, simply because no one has got round to replanting with something else. Paul Draper of Ridge Vineyards makes some excellent Carignan from vines planted in 1880. Here, as almost always, it is blended with other varieties. Chile has small amounts of old Carignan which are now greatly in demand and produce beautifully deep, minerally wines; so much so that more is being planted. There are some old vines in South Africa. Best producers: (France) Aupilhac, Clos Centeilles, la Dournie, Mont Tauch co-op, Pech-Redon, Rabiéga, Roc des Anges, la Voulte-Gasparets; (Italy/Sardinia) Argiolas, Mauritania, Santadi co-op; (California) Bonny Doon, Cline Cellars, Fife; (Chile) De Martino, Odfjell, Viña Segú, Miguel Torres, Valdivieso; (Spain) Vall-Llach.
A healthy crop of Carignan from 70-year-old vines in Chile’s Colchagua Valley. This vineyard, belonging to Villalobos Winery, was never trained, and thus grew wild – in clumps along the valley floor or, in this case, up trees. The vines aren’t tended during the year (horses help with the pruning by nibbling the shoots), and the forest has grown up around the vines. The harvest requires gauntlets, stepladders and a good sense of balance.
See Mazuelo here.
The Spanish name for Carignan/Mazuelo.
See here.
This US cross, bred in 1949 from Mazuelo and Cabernet Sauvignon, was planted in some spots in Western Australia because it was thought to be Sangiovese, and it’s actually done quite well. It has plenty of tannin, as one might expect from that parentage, and good acidity. It’s in decline in the USA and is mostly found in warmer parts of California.
A late-ripening Sicilian white grape, which is often trained as a bush vine and is a staple of Etna Bianco blend. It does well on its own, though: aromatic, fresh, orange-zesty and complex.
One of many old Italian varieties being rescued from extinction, this is found in the far north, where it was abandoned because of its susceptibility to fungal diseases. It makes very dark, tannic acidic wine redolent of plums and tobacco. Albina Armani is the main producer.
This is the principal name for the widely planted southern Portuguese grape better known by its nickname of Periquita, or ‘little parrot’, a name it acquired from a vineyard, Cova de Periquita, where it was planted by José Maria da Fonseca in the early 1850s. Its other names include João de Santarém, Bastardo Espanhol (in Madeira) and Trincadeira, though this is also a separate variety sometimes known in the Douro as Tinta Amarela.
It mostly makes appealing, upfront wines, quite low in acidity and high in alcohol, generally on the light side and with good raspberryish fruit. The Setúbal peninsula seems to be one of its best regions, though a little added acidity may be necessary for balance and here, particularly in Palmela, ripe, rich reds appear. It is prone to over-ripeness in Alentejo but can still produce some big juicy reds. Much is blended with other grapes, though it also appears as a varietal under several of its names.
Best producers: (Portugal) Quinta da Abrigada, Bacalhõa, Quinta do Casal Branco, J M da Fonseca, Quinta de Pegos Claros, Casa Santos Lima, Sogrape.
Widely planted Sicilian white grape that can attain good quality if yields are controlled, but only sometimes does so. Catarrato Bianco Comune and Cararratto Bianco Lucido are the same grape. It used to be grown for Marsala, but now is mostly either distilled or turned into grape concentrate. It features in several DOCs in Sicily, and if well made the wine can be crisp and vaguely interesting. Best producers: (Italy) Calatrasi, Rapitalà, Spadafora.
On the eastern US seaboard New York State grows Catawba for pink wines in various styles. Its skins are dark pink in colour, and it needs help from thermovinification to produce anything that could be described as red. The wine is decidedly ‘foxy’-tasting. It was first spotted growing beside the river Catawba in North Carolina in 1801, and is perhaps a labruscana, a crossing of Vitis labrusca and Vitis vinifera. Its synonyms include Mammoth Catawba and Francher Kello White. Best producers: (New York State) Lakewood.
An Iberian white variety with more synonyms than you could shake a stick at. In Spain it can be found as Jaén Blanco or Pardina, or as Mourisco Branco in Portugal, as well as Doradillo in Australia – though there is also a Doradillo in Málaga which is different to the Australian Doradillo. To have more than 50 synonyms suggests a high degree of popularity, but it’s not in all honesty very thrilling: neutral, oxidizes easily. The Australians fortify it, distill it or uproot it.
The name given to Tempranillo in central and southern Spain. See here.
A Portuguese grape found in Bairrada, Dão and the Douro, but distinct from the Sercial of Madeira. It adds good acidity to a blend – always an advantage with Portuguese whites.
Old, interesting but relatively rare vine found in Lazio, near Rome. Best producers: (Italy) Casale della Ioria, Casale Marchese, Villa Simone.
An ancient grape variety that originated either in northern France or Germany. Now it is practically extinct on the Yonne, and not permitted for AC wine in the Côte d’Or. The César in Chile may or may not be the same variety, and has mostly been uprooted. It gives dark-coloured, rather brutal wines.
A French hybrid, one of the best in existence, that produces wines of an intensely purple colour and a pronounced flavour of black cherries and blackberries, sometimes with a touch of spice or game. The wine is best drunk when young and fresh. It has been planted only since the 1960s and is found to a small extent in France’s Pays Nantais at the western end of the Loire Valley, and in southwest France, though only for table wine. In Australia Chambourcin is sometimes blended with Shiraz for the sake of its colour, but varietal versions (occasionally sparkling) are full of meaty, black cherry fruit. Sightings have been reported in Vietnam. Best producers: (Australia) D’Arenberg (Peppermint Paddock); (USA) Naylor.
A now rare Californian vine that was thought to be the same as Italy’s Dolcetto (see here) but is the same as Argentina’s Bonarda, which isn’t the same as the Italian Bonarda (there are six of these) but is the same as Douce Noire from France’s Savoie . . . zzzz – hey, wake up! There’s not much Charbono in California, but the wine is good, strong and smokily rich, and as Bonarda in Argentina – oh, just look back to here! Best producers: (California) Duxoup, Etude.
See here.
What did you get if, in the 19th century, you took cuttings of Merlot from Bordeaux and planted them in Chile? A field mix of Merlot and Carmenère, that’s what. And (according to most estimates) between 60 and 90 per cent Carmenère, which perhaps says something about the relative unimportance of Merlot in pre-phylloxera red Bordeaux.
The two vines look fairly similar, and are in fact closely related, the main difference in appearance being that Carmenère’s young leaves are red underneath, while Merlot’s are white, and that the central lobe of the Merlot leaf is longer. Chileans just assumed that Carmenère was a slightly weird clone of Merlot – well, you would. In Bordeaux Carmenère used to be considered to be just as good as Cabernet Sauvignon, but unlike the latter it proved an irregular yielder when grafted and it was phased out in the 20th century. It ripens some three weeks after Merlot, which makes a field blend problematic. The difference between the two varieties was officially recognized in Chile in 1996, and it has been possible to label wines as Carmenère since 1998, though some growers still call Carmenère ‘Merlot’ and ‘Merlot’ ‘Merlot Merlot’. All new plantings are of either Merlot or Carmenère, and Chilean growers are learning how to grow Carmenère. It dislikes irrigation or rain between winter and harvest time: water at this time exacerbates the green pepper flavour, as do poor soils which cause the vine to need more water. Because it gets high sugar levels before the tannins are ripe, it needs a long growing season, but in too hot a site the alcohol goes too high and the balance disappears. Even so, it is rapidly proving itself to be a really interesting grape with an unusual savoury quality to its taste. It also blends superbly with Cabernet, adding perfume and bright juiciness to the mix, rather as Cabernet Franc does in Bordeaux. In the winery it needs careful handling: its low acidity can leave it open to problems of bacterial infection and oxidation or reduction.
There are a few vines – literally a handful – in Bordeaux. Northern Italy has some, often labelled as Cabernet Franc. There are a few in California and quite a few more in Washington State, but the biggest plantings outside Chile are in China, where it is known as Cabernet Gernischt.
Carmenère’s low acidity gives it really sweet-tasting fruit, which makes it even more important to keep the green peppers under control: when ripe it has blackberry, black plum and spice flavours, rich, round tannins, and a marvellous savoury array of flavours – coffee, grilled meat, celery and soy sauce. This sweet/savoury flavour plus a full mouth-massaging texture make Carmenère a real original whose character often improves the palate of both Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot.
Purple Angel is one of Chile’s leading Carmenères, having a dark sensuous fruit richness and lush perfume that is tempered and made just a bit more serious by the addition of 8% of the tough, chewy Petit Verdot to the blend. The wine is a mixture of Carmenère from the daunting, powerful granitic Apalta vineyards and the more easy-going, clay-based El Arcángel vineyard in Marchigüe.
Caliterra
Caliterra planted their Colchagua vineyard 15 years ago, in a west-facing horseshoe of slopes looking out towards the Pacific Ocean. The wines are made in a fresh, modern style with good varietal definition.
Falernia
Elqui is the most northerly of Chile’s main wine regions, way up towards the Atacama Desert. Originally just a source of grapes for distillation, the Elqui Valley produces remarkable focused, cool climate Carmenère and Syrah.
New World extremes in Chile. The broad, flat, easy-to-cultivate expanses of Colchagua’s valley floor, contrasted with Carmenère on the steep, rugged slopes of Clos Apalta owned by Casa Lapostolle. No one’s going to mechanize these slopes.
Carmenère is late-ripening, dislikes water during the growing season and has a tendency to give green flavours in cool years. In addition, the vines seem to need to be mature to give good flavours: many winemakers agree that vines of under eight years old are likely to give vegetal-tasting wines without the admixture of fruit richness that marks out the grape’s eventual personality. So far all plantings are massal selections: research to identify the best clones started in late 2007, led by Talca University’s Dr Yerko Moreno.
CONSUMER INFORMATION
Synonyms & local names
Grande Vidure is the best known of several historic Bordeaux synonyms. This name was occasionally used in Chile, when the grape was first identified there. Cabernet Gernischt is its Chinese name. It is sometimes labelled Cabernet Franc in northeastern Italy.
CHILE Almaviva, Apaltagua, Arboleda, Bisquertt, Caliterra, Carmen, Casa Donoso, Casa Lapostolle, Casa Rivas, Casa Silva, Concha y Toro, De Martino, Luis Felipe Edwards, Errázuriz, Geo, Gracia, Los Robles, Montes, MontGras, Odfjell, Santa Rita, Terra Andina, Terranoble, Veramonte, Viu Manent.
Ten Chilean Carmenère wines
Caliterra Arboleda Carmenère
Carmen Grande Vidure Reserve
Casa Silva Carmenère Reserva
Concha y Toro Terrunyo Carmenère
De Martino Reserva de Familia Carmenère
Luis Felipe Edwards Carmenère
Falernia Carmenère
Gracia Carmenère Reserva Especial Callejero
Montes Purple Angel
MontGras Carmenère Reserva
Apaltagua Envero Carmenère
Arboleda Carmenère
Casa Lapostolle Clos Apalta
Casa Rivas Reserva Carmenère
Casa Silva Gran Reserva (tinto)
Luis Felipe Edwards Reserva Carmenère
Santa Rita Triple C
Terranoble Carmenère Gran Reserva
Veramonte Primus
Viu Manent Secreto
De Martino
Until a few years ago, Carmenère was always blended, usually with Merlot. This wine, from an old-established winery and one of the Maipo Valley’s rising stars, is a sign of how seriously the grape is now regarded in Chile.
Chardonnay: from Grape to Glass
Geography and History here; Viticulture and Vinification here; Chardonnay around the World here; Enjoying Chardonnay here
There seem to be more flavours associated with Chardonnay than with any other grape and it also has a wonderful affinity with new oak barrels. So here carved in the fresh new oak are many of these flavours, including cloves, hazelnuts, warm brioche and a host of different fruits.
You can have too much of a good thing. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. You can be the most adored and fawned upon, the most popular, the most respected and craved for. You can be the blonde-haired prince, the golden Queen, the vinous Almighty. And it can all go terribly wrong. How quickly can respect and reverence turn to sneering and abuse. How casually can a great reputation be mangled and past glories trodden underfoot in the rush to find something new to gawk at and proclaim. Just ask a Chardonnay producer.
If one grape variety led the New World wine revolution it had to be Chardonnay, the grape that could produce such lush, golden fruit, that could suck up the vanilla richness of oak barrels with such aplomb and create a wine bursting with ripe allure, oozing warmth and exotic promise, and yet somehow still be regarded as a dry white wine. Australia and California excelled at this, but where did they get the idea from? Well, those trailblazers back in the 1970s and 1980s chose Chardonnay to plant in their vineyards because one of the few European white wines with any reputation was white Burgundy – and the grape they used for white Burgundy was Chardonnay. They couldn’t take the Burgundy vineyards home, but they could try to study how the great wines were made – and they could plant the same grape – Chardonnay. Which they did, with awesome determination.
The rest of the world was watching, and it saw the rapidity with which Chardonnay took off. It saw how the drinking public swooned over this new experience – white wine that was soft, dryish, definitely fruity, often with a whiff of vanilla. And it sold like hot cakes to an entirely new generation of wine drinkers. Every single wine producer in every country who was just beginning to wonder if he or she could possibly attract the world’s wine buyers to even consider taking a slurp of their grog was hit by the same blinding explosion of light at the same time. And that starburst of light was a glittering sign in the brains of the winemakers of the world that flashed the single word – CHARDONNAY – with all the brilliance of a Broadway billboard full of 1000-watt bulbs.
So now, every time I try to discover a new region or country – what’s the wine I can’t avoid? Chardonnay. The south of France saw Chardonnay as their great white hope. Spain caught on, Italy even more so, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, Greece, India – yes, India, and it’s not too bad. Did I mention Moldova, Slovenia, Israel, China, Belgium, England? I should have done. They’ve all got Chardonnay, too.
But I haven’t even started on the New World. California, Australia, Chile, Argentina, New Zealand, South Africa – everywhere in the New World anyone has ever thought of planting a vine, Chardonnay is pretty well top of the list. Whether there are suitable conditions or not – it doesn’t matter. Chardonnay can make serviceable wine where it’s too cold and where it’s too hot, too dry, too windy, too wet.
So what went wrong? Chardonnay is simply too amenable. It can make pretty much any style and wine you want, from lean, crisp and minerally in northern Europe, through an astonishingly elegant savoury beauty in France’s Burgundy but also in the best examples from Australia, New Zealand and the USA, right through to tropical, voluptuous mouth-fillers. If it had stopped there, Chardonnay’s reputation would still be high, but sadly its very versatility and popularity meant that the industrial-scale wine producers, especially in California, Australia and Southern France, flogged its good nature to within an inch of its life, drowning its reputation in a floodtide of sugary, often cloddish and frankly unrefreshing liquid – or sometimes, in France and Italy, a liquid so pale and watery that you’d be excused for thinking they’d connected the filling machine to the cold water tap near the wine vat. I suppose it proves Chardonnay’s stunning versatility, but it’s done tremendous damage to its reputation. Even so, the good guys are fighting back, and along with the dross, there are more exciting Chardonnays in the world today than ever before.
Chardonnay is a global brand – has been for ages. But its brand manager has had to be pretty flexible in recent years. First there was boom, then – not exactly bust, not that; but certainly a move to ABC (Anything But Chardonnay). The grape became too successful, too ubiquitous. For a while it was seen as the answer to every struggling producer’s problems, and French AC rules were reviled because they forbade the uprooting of old local varieties and the planting of Chardonnay for yet another oaky. tropical-flavoured me-too. Then came the rise and rise of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, and more recently, a fascination with just those old, indigenous varieties that would have been grubbed up in favour of Chardonnay.
So Chardonnay has had to reinvent itself, and it has. Australian Chardonnay has done a 180˚ turn, from fat and buttery to lean and mineral. The rest of the Chardonnay world has watched, and done the same. Chardonnay across the world is like the ‘after’ in a TV makeover programme – elegant, tailored, slender.
Chardonnay, you see, can do pretty well anything you want. Its natural self is relatively neutral, but it willingly accepts almost any climate or winemaking technique. In cool, limestoney Chablis it produces wines of piercing minerality that no one in the world has been able to copy. In Le Montrachet and other top Burgundy vineyards it gives wines of such towering complexity that you can hardly believe they come from mere grapes. In warm climates across the globe it produces lush, creamy, peachy wines; in cooler ones, nuttier, stonier ones. It’s grown for sparkling wines everywhere, from Chile to Hampshire. It can be a cheap commodity wine, or it can improve in bottle for decades. A world without Chardonnay is impossible to imagine.
Chardonnay appears to have originated in Burgundy, though precisely when is more difficult to say. It is the offspring of Pinot and Gouais Blanc – the latter being a mediocre white variety that is now thought to have originated somewhere between northeastern France and southwestern Germany. Gouais Blanc was widely planted in the Middle Ages, though is now almost extinct (there’s a tiny bit in Haute-Savoie), but it became a sort of Queen Victoria figure – mother or grandmother to half Europe, with at least 81 offspring to its credit. Aligoté is a full sibling of Chardonnay, as is Gamay, so the vineyards of Burgundy and Beaujolais are every bit as crammed with close relatives as those of Bordeaux.
Chardonnay is first reliably identified in the late 17th century, in the village of St-Sorlin, now called La Roche-Vineuse, in the Mâconnais. It takes its name from the village of Chardonnay, also in the Mâconnais.
Pinot Blanc, which is a white mutation of Pinot Noir, looks extremely similar to Chardonnay, and confusion between the two has been common. Indeed, in places such as Australia and California, Chardonnay was sometimes labelled as ‘Pinot Chardonnay’ until late in the 20th century. The leaf shape is almost the same, but where Chardonnay has naked veins on top of the leaf, Pinot Blanc does not. The hairs on the shoot tips are slightly different.
There is a third vine that looks confusingly like both Chardonnay and Pinot Blanc: Auxerrois. Some French nurseries can be a little cavalier about correct identification – at least, it seems, when they are selling to foreigners: the ‘Chardonnay’ vines that were sold to Baden in the mid-1980s turned out to be a mixture of Chardonnay and Auxerrois; the same happened when South Africa bought ‘Chardonnay’ in the 1980s. One German vine expert even recalls visiting Chablis a few years ago and realizing that by no means all the vines he saw there were Chardonnay.
The seven Grands Crus of Chablis are situated on the appellation’s warmest, southwest-facing slopes just above the little town of Chablis. The differences between the Grands Crus are subtle, but real, and they can all too easily be hidden by an excess of new oak in the winery. Les Clos (above) produces the nuttiest, most honeyed wine of all, without any need for extra new oak.
Olivier Leflaive standing proudly in front of row after row of Burgundy’s creamy new oak barrels which he will use to age wines from both the Côte Châlonaise and Côte d’Or. Bâtard-Montrachet is a particular favourite of his.
Le Montrachet: for most people the wine from this vineyard is the pinnacle of white Burgundy. The slope is gentle – just 3% – and the soil thin, marly limestone, but the vines manage to catch more sunlight than those of any neighbouring vineyard.
There could not have been a white grape better suited than Chardonnay to launching the New World into the big league of winemaking. It cheerfully adapts to most soils and most climates, with its only problem in warm spots being a tendency to overripen rapidly and lose acidity.
In the decades when the winemaker was king, and the technical jiggery-pokery of the winery the focus of all attention, Chardonnay responded brilliantly, strutting its stuff with all the aplomb of a supermodel parading Versace in the morning and Armani after lunch. It is all too easy to make all Chardonnays taste alike – but the top producers in Burgundy, Australia and California are all now producing wine of vibrant, memorable individuality. Indeed, Chardonnay can express terroir and react to sensitive winemaking so well that the one boon offered by an excess of Chardonnay in a red wine-obsessed world has been that the best producers have had to make great efforts to search out and then maximize their grapes’ terroir personality to make them stand out from the golden crowd.
With Chardonnay, terroir does make a difference even though it settles down happily in a far greater range of terroirs than most other varieties; it reflects its terroir in the wine.
In cool climates it produces leaner, steelier flavours and reasonably keen acidity, though no other region so far has been able to mimic the mineral steeliness of Chablis. Chablis, Champagne and Tasmania are among the few regions where Chardonnay can taste green and unripe, though good viticulture, global warming and the grape’s early-ripening nature can combine to defeat this in all but cold and wet years. But it buds early, as well, so is prone to frost damage in the spring: frost is the bane of most Burgundians’ lives. Even if your vineyards are frost-free, cool wet weather during flowering can produce the uneven fruit set to which Chardonnay is also particularly prone. Late pruning, which delays flowering by up to a fortnight, can push flowering into a period of warmer, drier weather.
At the higher end of the temperature scale, Chardonnay can turn broad, heavy and flabby, with insufficient acidity to balance its melony fruit. Ideally, Chardonnay likes a long, slow ripening period in which it can develop flavour. In warm climates the temptation can be to pick before the acidity plummets; but more acidity in such cases can mean less flavour.
Limestone, chalk and clay are important for Chardonnay, though it will produce good flavours on a huge variety of soils. In France, key Chardonnay regions juggle these three soil types in different proportions: solid chalk in Champagne; limestone with clay on the Côte d’Or. The soil of the heart of Chablis is Kimmeridgian chalky marl and marly limestone. The scattered areas of Petit Chablis, the lowliest Chablis appellation, spill on to Port-landian limestone which gives less finesse.
On shallow, limy soils Chardonnay produces its tightest, most minerally wines; clay gives more weight and depth. In Meursault Perrières, for example, where the topsoil is barely 30cm (12in) deep over the limestone, the wine is restrained, powerful and slow maturing; in Meursault Charmes, where the topsoil is nearly 2m (6ft) deep, the wine is rounder, richer and more seductive.
In Walker Bay, South Africa, Anthony Hamilton Russell of Hamilton Russell Vineyards believes that his low-vigour, stony, shale-derived soils, with their high proportion of clay, compensates for a climate that is warmer than Burgundy to produce relatively tight, restrained, minerally Chardonnay. Fruit grown on sandstone in the same area produces far richer and broader wine.
Dominique Lafon looks like a moody French film star but is, in fact, one of the most serious and talented grape growers and winemakers in Burgundy, specializing in outstanding Meursault.
In the warm Hunter Valley in New South Wales, by contrast, Chardonnay is grown on the same light sandy soil that is favoured for Semillon: drainage is all important in a region where rain can make heavy, poorly drained soil impassable.
Chardonnay’s ability to ripen and attain good sugar levels even in unpromising sites makes it less yield-sensitive than, say, Pinot Noir. Go over about 80hl/ha in the low-vigour soils of France, however, and you’re risking serious loss of quality – and watery, dilute wine. On the hills of the Midi 50–60hl/ha is probably about right for vin de pays. For really top Burgundian Chardonnay yields of about 30–45hl/ha are probably necessary. In Champagne yields may well exceed 100hl/ha – finesse, not concentration, is the aim here. On high-vigour soils, yields of 60–100hl/ha may well be necessary for vine balance. New Zealand manages to combine high yields with some of the most intense Chardonnay flavours in the New World; so it is possible
In Burgundy, there is little quality difference between massal selection and clones. The clones, of course, start off virus-free, which massal selected cuttings do not; many growers prefer clones for this reason. Each has its disadvantages: plant virus-free clones and your yields may be too high; plant virused cuttings and your vines run a serious risk of dying in 10 or 15 years.
Commercially available clones worldwide have improved hugely in the past 15 years, and choosing the right clone can make all the difference between producing a wine that sells for a low price, and one that attracts a much higher one. New Dijon clones, better adapted to cooler climates, are helping produce richer flavours in Oregon. New Zealand produces remarkably powerful flavours despite generally nondescript clones, and Chile is also short of decent clones. Chardonnay Musqué, with its surprisingly Muscat-like aroma, is found in the Mâconnais, particularly in Clessé; there is also a Chardonnay Rose, with intriguing pink berries. Old selections, like Wente in California and Mendoza in Australia and New Zealand, with mature vines, are now producing exceptional full-bodied wines.
This somewhat neutral grape variety, once it gets into the winery, can be subjected to as many different treatments as the jawline of an aging socialite. All are directed towards influencing, refining or even adding flavour. Techniques usually thought of as Burgundian – barrel fermentation, malolactic fermentation and bâtonnage, or lees stirring – add, or bring out, nutty, toasty, creamy flavours in the wine; New World techniques – maceration with the skins, cold fermentation, ultra-hygiene – give tropical, fruit-forward flavours. From the 1980s onwards each camp has increasingly adopted the techniques of the other, which has led to cleaner, fresher white Burgundy and more elegant, restrained and subtle New World Chardonnays. Present a winemaker blind with a line-up of top Chardonnays from around the world, and it is increasingly likely that a Burgundian, an Italian, an Australian and a Californian will all mistake each other’s wines for their own.
In Burgundy, and increasingly elsewhere for top wines, wild yeasts are allowed to have their way with the must, though producers might resort to cultured yeast if the fermentation is too slow in starting. The more mature the grapes, the longer the fermentation may last – though few continue as long as one of Domaine des Comtes Lafon’s 1963 Chardonnays, which persisted for four or five years; the wine was eventually bottled in 1968.
Fermentation in barrel requires the right proportion of sediment to juice and, of course, clean sediment. Too many solids in the juice, says Dominique Lafon, give ‘really weird wines’ with green, bitter flavours. Fining the juice before fermentation, which might be necessary with machine-picked grapes, can, however, make the juice difficult to ferment.
Or, if you prefer, the pox. It doesn’t sound a lot better, but it’s not meant to. It started with the 1995 and 1996 vintages of white Burgundy. Both were good years; the wines were supposed to last 10 or 15 years with no problem, before reaching their peak of complexity and resonance. But early tastings rang alarm bells: first one wine, then another, tasted very odd. Instead of tasting tight and closed, all structure and freshness, they tasted oxidized. People were quick to blame the corks, and cork probably was a factor – but this wasn’t random, with a bottle or two per case being affected. It gradually became clear that whole wines, whole vintages, were oxidizing years before they should.
Now, a few years on, it’s possible to identify what happened; and there were multiple causes. This was not a quick-fix problem. One factor was riper years giving wines with lower acidity: acidity helps to protect wines against oxidation. Another was the entirely laudable desire of growers to make purer wines, with lower levels of sulphur dioxide, the all-purpose winery antioxidant. Another was more reductive winemaking, in which the juice was protected against oxidation; it’s counter-intuitive, but if the juice oxidizes early the wine is protected against oxidation later. Another was the fermentation of purer juice, with less solid matter in it and lower levels of phenolics – phenolics are also an antioxidant. Another was oxygen entering at bottling stage. And cork might have been part of the problem: the massive improvement in cork quality has been in this century, not last.
So what are Burgundian producers doing now? Vintages since 2002 have been less affected, but the problem hasn’t gone away. They’re using more sulphur, which they don’t like, and they’re allowing more solids in the juice. They’re doing much less lees-stirring, that technique used during a wine’s aging to keep the lees in suspension: it adds fatness to a wine, but could have been a factor in premox. Some have looked hard at their corks. What they want to do now is bring sulphur levels back down, but without having their wines die early. They’re getting there, but it’s best not to think of white burgundy as being the reliably long-lived wine it once was.
In Champagne chaptalization is still normal, though climate change is giving more and more vintages where it’s not necessary, and Champagne producers have been heard wondering whether acidity levels in the region might be falling below what they need. But as the best vintages in Champagne have nearly always been the ripest ones, there is probably no need for alarm yet.
Indeed, riper base wines (and there are more good Chardonnay vintages in Champagne than there are good Pinot vintages), more precise viticulture (which normally means parcels divided so that each parcel has homogenous vigour and ripeness) and picking at the optimum moment, plus ever more gentle winemaking, mean that zero-dosage Champagnes are becoming more common. Even where producers don’t want to go that far, dosage levels generally have been falling: 9 grams per litre of dosage would be about normal for a non-vintage blend now, and less for a vintage. A generation ago this might have been nearer 15 grams per litre. Vintage wines tend to be riper anyway, and the longer times on the lees means that less dosage is needed.
Lees aging has an extraordinary effect on flavour. The breakdown of yeast cells releases many different substances into the wine – amino acids, peptides, proteins, fatty acids and others. Some of these give the wine extra aromas, others act as flavour enhancers. Amino acids give flavours of toffee, hazelnuts, honey, and cocoa. There’s a protein called thaumatin, which is 2500 times sweeter than sugar.
Non-vintage Champagne must by law spend 12 months on the lees before disgorgement, which is just about long enough for some yeast autolysis character to start showing in the wine. Sparkling wines from other parts of the world, though often made from a similar blend of Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and perhaps Pinot Meunier, may decide against any lees aging at all. In France the preference is for drinking very young Champagne – brisk, refreshing, occasionally tart. Britain and the USA generally prefer Champagne with a little more age. Champagne kept in cool conditions can easily improve for 10–20 years. Even non-vintage blends can benefit greatly from 5–10 years’ maturity. As the wine ages, the colour deepens, the flavour becomes much richer, toastier, nuttier, and the bubbles become less insistent and softer. Some of the most heavenly old Champagnes I’ve luxuriated in have been Blanc de Blancs wines based on Chardonnay grapes from the Côte des Blancs.
The difference between Chardonnay styles is increasingly not one of regions, but one of climates and techniques – although it is uncertain that anybody outside Burgundy has yet produced a convincing imitation of the sublime flavours of Montrachet. But watch this space. The wine world is full of ambitious producers busting a gut to do so.
Great white Burgundy is the epitome of Chardonnay. It is the wine that persuaded the rest of the world to plant Chardonnay, and to try and copy the flavours of the Côte d’Or. Yet the absence of the grape’s name from most Burgundy labels means that it seemed to appear from nowhere and take over the world in one mighty bound.
It is planted widely on the Côte de Beaune; and there is relatively little on the Côte de Nuits. Montrachet is smoky and immensely concentrated; Puligny-Montrachet is structured, savoury and tight; Chassagne-Montrachet oatmealier and softer; Meursault creamy and oatmealy; and Corton-Charlemagne rich yet minerally. Further north in Chablis, where the geology is quite different, the wine takes on a flinty, austere mineral character, flecked with honey, especially if it is made and aged without oak.
Further south in Burgundy a bit of a quality revolution is quickening. Côte Chalonnaise wines are lean but nutty. The best Mâconnais are fleshy, rich, yet balanced. All are for drinking young. But it’s not for nothing that so many Côte d’Or growers have been seeking land down here.
Chardonnay does not reach full ripeness here, even on the best, east-facing exposures of the Côte des Blancs. It’s not the hours of sunshine that hold Chardonnay back – Champagne has as many of those as Alsace – it’s the temperature. The west wind sweeps in across these low hills, keeping the annual mean temperature to around 10.5°C (51°F) – just half a degree above the absolute minimum needed to ripen grapes. Winemakers here look for creamy, nutty, flowery characters in the Chardonnay; for vinosity, elegance and aroma. Mention the word ‘fruit’ to them and they say, ‘Oh yes, of course’; but one feels that it comes a good way down the list of priorities.
Because Champagne is usually a blend of regions and more often than not a blend of grapes, the different villages and districts are valued for the qualities they bring to the party. The Côte des Blancs villages of Cramant, Oger, Mesnil and Vertus all add the desired attributes of elegance and aroma, while Chardonnay from the eastern end of the Montagne de Reims is leaner and zesty; that from the Côte de Sézanne to the south is creamier, more lush.
Chardonnay has spread relentlessly from its bases in Burgundy and Champagne into the Jura, Savoie, the Ardèche, the Loire and even Alsace. These wines are usually light, and generally fairly mineral and lean but give Chardonnay another chance to express a different face. In the Midi, where the grape used to be given the Australian treatment, styles have calmed down to a better balance. In Languedoc it is best grown on the hills, and produces better quality than in Roussillon, where it is 3–4°C hotter on average; the higher altitudes of the Limoux or Pic St-Loup vineyards seem to be capable of producing better quality still. Indeed, Chardonnay from Limoux’s limestone hills is developing a good reputation for its restrained and age-worthy style. Most Chardonnay from the Midi is pleasant rather than special – the soils are a bit fertile and the yields a bit high. Some of the best wines have a little scented Viognier blended in.
In Italy, Tuscan Chardonnay is becoming increasingly refined as the vines grow older. Over-oaking can still be a problem, as can over-generous yields in the north of the country. There may well be some confusion, either intentional or unintentional, with Pinot Blanc: Nicolas Belfrage, in Barolo to Valpolicella, quotes an unnamed Alto Adige producer as saying ‘the best Chardonnay in Alto Adige is that made with Pinot Bianco’.
In Lombardy much goes to the sparkling wine industry; Franciacorta is particularly high quality. Some of the best still wines come from Piedmont, where the cooler climate gives the wines greater elegance. All over Italy it is blended with every conceivable white grape: Cortese, Favorita, Erbaluce, Ribolla, Albana, Trebbiano, Vermentino, Procanico, Incrocio Manzoni, Verdeca, Grecanico, Catarratto, Nuragus, Viognier – and even Nebbiolo vinified off the skins.
Spain, for the most part, is a bit hot for Chardonnay and its star has waned in the face of an explosion of interest in Spain’s own native varieties like Verdejo, Godello and Albariño. Penedès, Navarra, Somontano and Costers del Segre are its strongholds; it is permitted in Rioja. In Penedès it may be blended into sparkling Cava, generally with good results.
Vincent Dauvissat
Dauvissat is one of Chablis’ great traditionalist stars, using old oak barrels to produce thrillingly pure and characterful Chablis.
Domaine Leflaive
Domaine Leflaive is probably the most famous producer in Puligny and its Montrachet, produced in tiny quantities, is rare and fabled.
Billecart-Salmon
This family-owned Champagne house makes wines of great elegance and delicacy. The name dates from 1818, when a M. Billecart married a Mlle Salmon.
Vineyards owned by the Chalone winery in the remote Gavilan Mountains above Soledad in Monterey County, California. In the 1970s Chalone was one of the first Californian producers to seek out limestone soil and the white wines have always possessed wonderful depth and balance.
There is only a little Chardonnay in Portugal, but it is made in a generally international style. Germany has some fairly beefy examples. Austria’s is somewhat leaner, and Austria as a whole is getting over its over-oaking habit. It is found throughout Eastern Europe, with light, attractive examples coming from Hungary, often under Australian tutelage. Bulgarian Chardonnay is generally attractive, without any particular character of its own. Slovenian examples can be more elegant and Croatia does it well unoaked; Swiss ones are light and attractive. There are isolated but good examples from Turkey, Israel and Greece. And England, Belgium and Denmark have all planted it, with surprisingly pleasing results. In England, especially, it plays a crucial role in the burgeoning sparkling wine business, especially since many soils in southern England are remarkably similar to those of Champagne, both being part of the chalk and limestone system called the Paris Basin.
Despite winemakers showing a keen interest in less familiar white varieties such as Viognier and Pinot Gris, Chardonnay is still California’s most important variety, accounting for almost 20 per cent of the harvest in 2013. Much of it is in Napa, Sonoma and Santa Barbara counties; some of the best is on Sonoma Coast, but an awful lot is also in the torrid Central Valley. Replanting after the Biotype B phylloxera infestation has concentrated it where it should be, in the cooler spots: Sonoma Coast, the new favourite area, where Chardonnay has real elegance and freshness; Carneros, with nutty fruit and brisk acidity, and Russian River offering a bit more substance and flinty fruit. Monterey Chardonnay is reminiscent of mango or guava; while wines from Santa Maria and Santa Barbara are richer but less tropical. Alexander Valley is creamy and silky. Carneros, Russian River and Anderson Valley are all key areas for sparkling wine. Basic Chardonnay from the Central Valley is generally off-dry and dull.
Styles are evolving away from super-ripeness and sweetness towards much more elegance and freshness, though it’s taking a while for some to find poise at this new level. Growers seem to favour a bit less alcohol, even in Napa, which leaves Napa Cabernet Sauvignon rather out on a limb as the only wine there still clinging to the lifebelt of size and weight and the mantra ‘more is more’.
How far can you go in modifying styles in the Napa, where the intrinsic style is big and alcoholic? It is possible to remove some alcohol by using reverse osmosis, osmotic distillation or with a contraption called a Spinning Cone. Experiments suggest that reverse osmosis is the best method, and that if you gradually reduce the alcohol from 14 per cent down to 12 per cent you will hit two or three different levels of alcohol where the wine is in balance. Choosing one of these allows a winemaker to fine-tune a wine in the cellar. Others prefer to do it in the vineyard, with a combination of clever choice of site, canopy management and control of yields.
Washington Chardonnay is not dissimilar to Californian Chardonnay, generally with an emphasis on fruit flavour rather than creamy texture, but the top producers are beginning to produce good, savoury, nutty, Burgundian styles. Oregon’s wines are becoming richer as it plants better, Dijon, clones. In New York State Chardonnay flourishes especially in Long Island and Finger Lakes – helped by its resistance to winter cold, and Virginia makes some serious examples. In Canada, too, it seems at home, producing rich wines in Niagara and oatmealy classics in Prince Edward County, Ontario and lighter ones in British Columbia.
Ca’ del Bosco
Winemaker Maurizio Zanella’s aim with this Chardonnay is to equal Burgundy. So it’s barrel-fermented, and is a deep, smoky, buttery delight.
Newton
Newton introduced the concept of unfiltered Chardonnay to California. It’s an intense, refined wine of tremendous complexity.
Roederer Estate
Roederer uses grapes from the cool, damp Anderson Valley in northern California to produce a fine, sparkling wine in the style of Champagne.
Australian Chardonnay is here to stay. Styles are constantly evolving, with more refined, cooler climate wines at the top end, and more complexity lower down the scale, derived from Burgundian techniques like lees stirring, as well as from new and better Dijon clones. Over-oaking is much less of an affliction than it was, and there is less charring on the oak. The quest now is for minerality and flintiness. Today’s Chardonnays are nothing like those of the 1980s, when deep golden-coloured, broad, fat, oily wines full of rich butterscotch flavours were the rule. Now colours are paler, structure is better and the fruit flavours are those of nectarine or white peach instead of melon and pineapple. Partly it’s a question of picking earlier, perhaps before the stems are fully lignified; partly it’s a question of gentler pressing and whole-bunch pressing, for the right phenolics, but not bitterness. Warmer regions routinely add acidity in the winery, and this is apt to show on the palate.
Chardonnay displays regional variations less than some grapes, but Hunter Chardonnay is buttery, viscous and opulent: the style of Chardonnay most often thought of as Australian, in other words. More elegant wines of varying styles but increasingly high quality come from the Yarra Valley with some outstanding oatmealy, minerally wines from Mornington Peninsula. There is considerable complexity in the Eden Valley and Adelaide Hills wines. Margaret River produces wines of outstanding concentration and complexity, and Tasmanian wines go from delicate and citrous to complex and resonant. The Riverland makes everything from inexpensive bulk wines to surprisingly high-quality examples. The coolest regions, including Tasmania, Geelong and the Macedon Ranges, have some conditions comparable to that of Champagne, and produce sparkling wine of great finesse and style.
Basic Australian Chardonnay, however, displays none of these regional characteristics. It is a commodity wine, made to a price, manipulated in the winery, and you get what you pay for.
New Zealand makes some of the most intense, powerful and balanced Chardonnays in the New World, marrying ripeness and depth with good acidity. Indeed, as some producers appear to have lost their confidence in making the really snappy Sauvignons that catapulted New Zealand to global recognition, they seem to have rediscovered how to make deep, savoury Chardonnay in its place. The most powerful come from Hawkes Bay, though Marlborough and Canterbury can produce impressive results and Gisborne wines are lush and delicious. Wairarapa, Nelson and even Auckland also do well. Chardonnay suffers from fashion swings here, but the best are world class.
Australian Chardonnay: a new classic
Chardonnay vineyards at Leeuwin Estate in Margaret River, Western Australia (right). Leeuwin Estate makes complex Chardonnays that approach top Burgundies in their structure and ageability – and few people could have dreamt, 30 years ago, that Australia was capable of such quality. The grape is no newcomer to Australia. It was first planted in the 19th century, but winemakers didn’t fall in love with it until after Murray Tyrrell produced a commercial version in the Hunter Valley in 1971, having acquired his vines by hopping over the fence into a neighbouring Penfolds vineyard to remove a few thousand prunings. The first reactions to the wine were, ironically, that Australians would never drink white wine with oak. Wine show judges gave it six marks out of 20, and as Murray’s son Bruce Tyrrell says: ‘even the spit bucket gets eight’.
Grosset
This is the direction of top Australian Chardonnay today: cool climate fruit from regions like Adelaide Hills in South Australia, restrained alcohol levels and subtle aging in oak barrels.
As winemaker Ignacio Recabarren puts it, ‘in terms of quality, winery improvements took Chardonnay from under the table to on top of the table. To get to the roof we must work on viticulture. We are currently about halfway to the roof.’ One of the battles is getting better clones into the vineyards; the other major factors here are climate and yields. The latter are generally high to very high; the former, in this long thin country, are infinitely adjustable. Let’s take a look at the cool Casablanca Valley: plantings started here in about 1990. There’s a frost risk in spring here; Recabarren characterizes it as cool as Mâcon in Burgundy, but warmer than Marlborough with harvest usually mid to late March. (Chile’s Central Valley would be early February.) However, Casablanca is closer to the Equator than comparable regions elsewhere, which means that the grapes can be left on the vine for longer and still benefit from the sun’s warmth. The other side of the coin is that leaving the grapes on the vine longer means lower acidity.
High yields do not in themselves imply lower quality: the balance of the vine is the crucial point. Casablanca’s yields are high for two reasons, one of which is specific to the valley and tied to its frost risk; the other is common to the whole of Chile, and indeed to other Southern Hemisphere countries.
Casablanca’s frost risk is very real. Usually it would be combated by air propellers, or by water sprinklers. Sprinklers, however, use four times as much water as drip irrigation, and water is scarce here. Propellers need an inversion layer, which is not always there. So Casablanca growers often use a system of leaving extra shoots on the vines at pruning to allow for frost damage. However, these shoots must be thinned after the danger of frost has passed, and before flowering if the vines are spur pruned; before the berries are pea-sized if the vines are cane pruned. Not to do so will mean too high a crop, and lower quality, in that year. Bit of a temptation for the greedy.
The second reason for high yields is that, more generally, Chile’s level of sunlight induction on the vine’s half-formed buds is higher than that in Europe. Dijon clones therefore naturally give higher crops here than they would back home in Burgundy.
But Casablanca isn’t Chile’s only cool climate paradise. Limarí, further north, is cooler yet and may well supplant Casablanca in quality terms. Coastal Leyda and San Antonio are also big new names for Chardonnay. All this is in keeping with the trend away from too much fat and too much oak: Chilean Chardonnays have moved fast to keep up with consumer tastes. In general, Chilean Chardonnays, even at the lowest price points, are fruity, balanced and probably the wine world’s best value for money Chardonnay. So far Argentina has lagged behind Chile, partly because of overproduction, and partly because the vines grown there were usually brought in to make sparkling wines, and grapes with ripeness and concentration of flavour were not priorities. But better clones, more ambitious producers and the development of cool areas like Gualtallary and Uco are bringing exciting results, sometimes in a relatively oaky style, but increasingly tasting savoury, balanced and refined.
The cacti in the foreground make you think: dry, desert – and yes, you’d be right. The Limari Valley in northern Chile is dry, but it isn’t that hot due to strong cold coastal breezes, and Limari Chardonnay is some of Chile’s best.
Climates are seldom very cool here, and even the coolest parts, like Walker Bay, are warmer than Burgundy, though perhaps cooler than Adelaide Hills. But within that framework, exciting Chardonnays with a Cape individuality are being produced. Hemel en Aarde on the far south of the country can produce exceptional full but minerally styles. Elgin is a little more delicate. Stellenbosch, though warm, does benefit from the coastal influences and makes a fresh, nutty style, as does Franschhoek. The biggest plantings are in Robertson – where unoaked styles can be very good off limestone soils – Stellenbosch and Paarl.
Glenora
This barrel-fermented Chardonnay hails from New York State’s Finger Lakes region. Steely acidity marries brilliantly with rich, toasty oak flavours.
Neudorf
Nelson, on the northern tip of New Zealand’s South Island has a reputation for being so laidback no one ever wants to leave. In which case, Neudorf’s outstanding, waxy, nutty Chardonnay should make it even easier to stay.
Viña Casablanca
Chile is only just developing the concept of single estate wines, but as vines mature in places like the Casablanca Valley, some vineyards, such as Nimbus, are starting to stand out.
Hamilton Russell Vineyards
Tim Hamilton Russell used to lament the fact that South Africa didn’t stretch 300km (200 miles) further south so that he could find really cool vineyard conditions. Even so he made South Africa’s first cool climate Burgundian Chardonnay in the 1970s.
To get the most out of a great Chardonnay – great, not merely good – you have to give it bottle age. True, Corton-Charlemagne can be utterly seductive from the barrel, but such wines are so rare and so expensive that drinking them straightaway can seem wickedly frivolous. Keeping wine like that for several years somehow both amortizes the expense and prolongs the pleasure. Am I showing my puritan streak? No. I’m showing that I’m such a hedonist that I can enthusiastically embrace the waiting period because I know that the eventual pleasure will be massive.
In a top year, from a leading producer, such Grand Cru white Burgundies can last up to 30 years, and really should not be drunk before they are eight or 10. But much depends on the style of the producer and how concentrated the wine is to begin with. Premiers Crus are less long-lived – 20 years might be the upper limit – and village wines should be drunk earlier again, within eight to 10 years. Bourgogne Blanc and Côte Chalonnaise are best drunk within five years; the best Pouilly-Fuissé can be allowed up to eight. At least, those are the traditional guidelines. Bear in mind that the premature oxidation problem (see box, here) should make anyone with potentially long-lived white burgundies in the cellar check on their progress regularly from a relatively young age.
There are as many rules for Chardonnays elsewhere as there are producers. Concentrated, balanced, cool climate wines from areas as diverse as Carneros, Russian River, Uco, Hawkes Bay, Mornington Peninsula and Margaret River may easily last a decade or more. Others may tire after only a few years. Much depends on the philosophy and skill of the producer. But simple, warm climate Chardonnays do conform to an unbreakable rule: drink them early for their brief, bright-eyed burst of fragrance and fruit.
The taste of Chardonnay is hard to pin down: unoaked wines from high-yielding vineyards may taste of not very much, while a minerally, concentrated bottle from the Côte d’Or or Margaret River may display a greater range of flavours than almost any other white grape. Some of these flavours may derive at least in part from vinification techniques; some come from the terroir, some from just the climate, some from the clone. Barely ripe Chardonnay tastes of green apples; riper, cool climate examples where the grapes had a long hang time have flavours of pears and acacia, lemons and grapefruit, nuts and biscuits, butter, honey and popcorn. There may also be a minerally, flinty or smoky streak to the fruit, some toast from the oak and, of course, balancing acidity which may seem tight and piercing in youth. White Burgundy and Burgundy lookalikes can boast oatmeal and a hint of savoury sulphur like a struck match.
Warmer climate Chardonnays get tropical, with mango, cream, banana, pineapple, melon and peach, plus butterscotch and more butter, honey and toast. There may be some spice, too, or boiled sweets. Everything but the kitchen sink, really.
Champagne is often just crisp and creamy or flowery in youth, and develops fresh breadcrust flavours and winey depth with age.
Marimar Torres’ objective in establishing her vineyard in the chilly Russian River Valley was to make lean, pure experiences of the Burgundian grapes Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. This Acero Chardonnay is made without oak and the flavour of the variety shines through. Bouzereau uses oak for his Meursault, but in the subtle, understated way that is the hallmark of all the best Burgundy producers. Meursault-Charmes is a Premier Cru, but interestingly, Bouzereau also includes the name of the parcel of vines inside the Premier Cru – Les Charmes Dessus – as an extra point of difference on the label.
With its broad spectrum of flavours and styles – from steely, cool-climate austerity to tropical lusciousness – there is a Chardonnay for almost every occasion, and most are superb with roast chicken or other white meat. The relatively lean end of the spectrum is one of the best choices for simple fish dishes. Top Burgundy and the really full, rich New World blockbusters need rich fish and seafood dishes. Oaky Chardonnays are good with tricky-to-match smoked fish, and work well with garlicky dips such as guacamole; unoaked styles are better with spicy Southeast Asian or north Indian food; they are also good all-rounders with, say, festive turkey.
Synonyms & local names
The world’s favourite white wine grape variety is rarely called by any other name and most of the old European synonyms have fallen into disuse; Austria, especially in Steiermark, still calls it Morillon.
FRANCE/Chablis Billaud-Simon, R & V Dauvissat, Droin, Fèvre, Louis Michel, C Moreau, Raveneau; Côte d’Or H Boillot, J-M Boillot, Bonneau du Martray, Bouchard, Carillon, Coche-Dury, Marc Colin, Colin-Morey, Drouhin, Arnaud Ente, J-N Gagnard, Jadot, A Jobard, Lafon, H Lamy, Dom. Leflaive, Bernard Morey, Niellon, Ramonet, Roulot, Sauzet, Verget; Mâconnais D & M Barraud, Bret, Ferret, Merlin, Saumaize-Michelin, J Thévenet.
AUSTRIA Bründlmayer, Tement, Velich, Wieninger.
GERMANY Huber, Johner, Knipser, Rebholz, Wittmann.
ITALY Bellavista, Ca’ del Bosco, Gaja, Isole e Olena, Lageder, Lis Neris, Castello della Sala, Tiefenbrunner, Vie di Romans.
SPAIN Chivite, Enate, Manuel Manzaneque, Muñoz, Torres.
USA/California Au Bon Climat, Calera, Chateau St Jean, Dutton Goldfield, Gary Farrell, Flowers, Hanzell, HdV, Iron Horse, Kistler, Littorai, Marcassin, Merryvale, Peter Michael, Newton, David Ramey, Ridge, Saintsbury, Sanford, Shafer, Stony Hill, Talbott;
Oregon Domaine Drouhin, Domaine Serene, Evening Land.
CANADA Le Clos Jordanne, Closson Chase, Flat Rock, Norman Hardie, Joie Farm, Pearl Morissette, Quails’ Gate, Tawse.
AUSTRALIA Bannockburn, Bindi, Brookland Valley, Cape Mentelle, Coldstream Hills, Cullen, Curly Flat, Diamond Valley, Giaconda, Grosset, Howard Park, Leeuwin, Moorooduc, Oakridge, Penfolds, Pierro, Savaterre, Shaw & Smith, Tapanappa, Tarrawarra, Tyrrell’s, Vasse Felix, Voyager, Woodlands, Yabby Lake.
NEW ZEALAND Ata Rangi, Babich, Bell Hill, Brancott, Church Road, Cloudy Bay, Craggy Range, Dog Point, Dry River, Escarpment, Felton Road, Fromm, Kumeu River, Matua Valley, Neudorf, Ngatarawa, Palliser, Peregrine, Saint Clair, Seresin, Te Mata, TerraVin, Trinity Hill, Vavasour, Vidal.
SOUTH AFRICA Ataraxia, Bouchard Finlayson, Chamonix, Paul Cluver, Crystallum, Hamilton Russell, Jordan, Mulderbosch, Thelema, Vergelegen.
SOUTH AMERICA Aquitania, Catena, Cobos, Concha y Toro, De Martino, Errázuriz, Leyda, Maycas del Limarí, Tabalí, Tapiz.
Ten classic white Burgundies
Bonneau du Martray Corton-Charlemagne
Brocard Chablis Montmains
Coche-Dury Meursault les Perrières
René et Vincent Dauvissat Chablis la Forêt
Joseph Drouhin Beaune Clos des Mouches
Girardin Chassagne-Montrachet les Caillerets
Louis Jadot Chevalier-Montrachet les Demoiselles
Domaine Leflaive Le Montrachet
Raveneau Chablis les Clos
Robert-Denogent Pouilly-Fuissé les Carrons
Ataraxia Chardonnay (South Africa)
Bergstrom Chardonnay (Oregon)
Crystallum Clay Shales Chardonnay (South Africa)
Dog Point Chardonnay (New Zealand)
Grosset Piccadilly Chardonnay (Australia)
Hamilton Russell Chardonnay (South Africa)
Leeuwin Estate Art Series Chardonnay (Australia)
Marimar Estate Chardonnay (California)
Maycas del Limarí Chardonnay (Chile)
Neudorf Chardonnay (New Zealand)
Norman Hardie Chardonnay (Canada)
Penfolds Yattarna Chardonnay (Australia)
Pierro Chardonnay (Australia)
Billecart-Salmon Blanc de Blancs Vintage
Deutz Blanc de Blancs Vintage
Jacquesson Blanc de Blancs Grand Cru Vintage
Krug Clos de Mesnil Vintage
Ruinart Blanc de Blancs Vintage
Ca’ del Bosco Satein Franciacorta (Italy)
Deutz Marlborough Cuvée Blanc de Blancs Vintage (New Zealand)
Green Point/Domaine Chandon Blanc de Blancs Vintage (Australia)
Nyetimber Première Cuvée Blanc de Blancs Vintage (England)
Roederer Estate L’Ermitage Vintage (California)
Chardonnay looks so similar to Pinot Blanc that in Italy they were only officially differentiated in 1978, though France managed it in 1872. Small quantities of Pinot Blanc can still be found on the otherwise Chardonnay-dominated white vineyards of the Côte d’Or.
Most Chardonnay should be drunk early: only top wines are designed to improve with years of bottle age.
2010 was a good year for white Burgundy generally, but excellent for Chablis. The wines have fabulous purity, minerality and racy, ripe acidity.
Burgundy’s conditions were a bit erratic in 2011, and a cool summer ended with rain bringing good, medium-weight wines.
