It’s hard out there for a chardonnay lover. Long the go-to wine of white drinkers (and still the most popular white produced in the United States), the varietal that used to be the sole purview of boutique California wineries is now ubiquitous, corporate and, often, loathed.
What some chardon-lovers call “buttery”, chardon-haters call “like microwave popcorn”. What used to be enhanced by the subtle impact of oak barreling is now punched up by the standard practice of tossing oak chips in steel barrels (including ones treated with chemicals) or, God forbid, adding chemicals to give the wine an “oak” flavor. Even the French gave up the ghost in 2006 and allowed producers to start using oak chips or planks instead of oak barrels.
So, if you’ve ever watched your host mask a grimace when you show up to dinner with a Barefoot chardonnay (Barefoot, a Gallo company, is the top-selling wine brand in the US), it’s not just because you showed up with a bottle illustrated by a naked foot of unknown provenance, it’s also because a lot of people have internalized that they don’t like chardonnay.
So what’s a chardon-fan to do?
You could evangelize and try to get your friends to drink un-oaked chardonnays, which taste remarkably different and often lack the overly woody or overly buttery feels of the oaky ones. You could spend the time and effort to find the rare chardonnays still produced in oak barrels and without chips or planks or chemicals, though labels won’t often be helpful in figuring it out. You could just swear that the chardonnays you love don’t remind anyone of off-brand, chemical-filled corn-based snack foods. But, chances are, a chardon-hater is still gonna hate.
And, at the end of the day, sharing wine is a group exercise: a good host or a good guest ought to at least try to bring a wine that others will enjoy. And even a dyed-in-the-wool red-drinker can appreciate that some occasions (mostly ones involving fish and lemon-based sauces) call for something on the lighter side.
My go-to white to share with others tends to be a grüner veltliner, an Austrian varietal that, sold in America, tends to be tart instead of sweet and fruity without being too grape-y. Most wine stores won’t carry more than a couple of bottles of it, though, and outside of major urban areas, you might not find any.
Barring that, I often look for a (French) vouvray; you may occasionally find other wines in the US called “vouvray”, but the name actually refers specifically to chenin blanc produced in the Vouvray region of the Loire Valley. And though most of what you’ll find in America won’t be the sweet versions, vouvray producers make wines that are classified as sweet or dry, so look for words like “sec” or “demi-sec” on the label to avoid something that your guests might find syrup-y.
Many Americans will be familiar with sauvignon blancs (which are usually part of the stable of wines from familiar, corporate producers), but those from New Zealand can often be crowd-pleasers. Like grüner veltliners, they tend to be tart instead of sweet, and, when you can avoid the ones bottled in bulk, interesting on the palate. In the US, you’ll almost exclusively have access to ones produced in Marlborough, on the South Island.
There are plenty of other great whites in the world – but producers will only start growing them, and distributors will only start making them available in the extremely fragmented US retail market, if there are buyers paying for them. So next time you go to pick up a white wine, take a step past the California chardonnay section and see what else your local liquor or grocery store has on offer. Your hosts and guests might thank you.
And, if you have to, you can save the chardonnay for yourself.
