CELEBRITY PANELISTS

STEVE HEIMOFF, Wine Enthusiast
JENNE LEE BONACCORSI, Bonaccorsi Wine Company – Santa Rita Hills
BOB CABRAL, Williams Selyem – Russian River Valley
DIETER CRONJE, Presqu’ile Winery – Santa Maria Valley
JAMES HALL, Patz & Hall – Carneros Valley
ERIC JOHNSON, Talley Vineyards – Arroyo Grande & Edna Valleys
HEIDI VON DER MEHDEN, Arrowood Vineyards & Winery – Sonoma Valley
BILL WATHAN, Foxen – Santa Maria Valley
GRAHAM WEERTS, Stonestreet – Alexander Valley

Chardonnay, the grape and wine, is often referred to as “neutral,” in the sense that it is not particularly strongly flavored, the way, say, Sauvignon Blanc or Riesing are. To some extent, this is an old-fashioned perception: Chardonnay’s flavor intensity (as the great U.C. Davis academicians, Maynard Amerine and Vernon Singleton, reminded us) tends to be dependent on its ripeness, and in its native France, Chardonnay seldom got too ripe. That is why it became the example of terroir in such regions as Chablis and, indeed, why it became such an important base wine in Champagne.

In California, many degrees of latitude further south than Chablis, the climate is warmer and Chardonnay gets considerably riper and, thus, more flavorful. Still, until the advent of the “unoaked” Chardonnay phenomenon that began several years ago, Chardonnay has been, among all grape varieties, perhaps the most intervened with and manipulated by its human interpreters, the winemakers. Consider all the bells and whistles winemakers apply to it in the winery: they ferment and age it in oak barrels that often have been flamed until the wood chars. They age the wine on its lees, or spent, dead yeast cells, frequently stirring the soupy mixture. They induce the malolactic fermentation, or allow it to happen by itself. And so on and so forth. And then, when the wine is in the bottle and being marketed, they announce, in stentorian tones, that it is a wine of terroir.

What can this possibly mean? How can a wine so thoroughly manufactured in the winery conceivably be said to be a pristine expression of the place it was grown–its soil, slope, elevation and climate or weather of the vintage?

This seeming paradox may have no definitive answer. But if anyone can address it eloquently and with wisdom, it is the eight individuals on our panel, all of whom craft Chardonnay in California, from regions ranging from the Santa Maria Valley, where the Chardonnay Symposium is held, through the Central Coast and on up into the North Coast counties of Napa and Sonoma. Our discussion will center on this question: Given that Chardonnay is, by all accounts, a neutral grape, how do you preserve or express terroir under all that winemaker influence?