Chehalem’s Stoller Vineyard

Novice wine drinkers are easily fooled, and nowhere does it happen more often than on the Chardonnay racks. It’s been almost thirty years since commercially concocted Chardonnay took the American market by storm. We never could drink those wines. They seemed cloyingly sweet to our palates. The wood was overbearing. These were wines you might be coaxed into drinking with peanuts at a bar while watching a ball game — not something you’d let get near your dinner table.

But we like Chardonnay. We like its breadth, its muscle, its age-worthiness. But, these days our readers aren’t overly excited about shelling out $75 for Meursault and Chassagne Montrachet. So, we conducted a tasting of under-$25 Chardonnay at our favorite backroom haunt in NYC a couple of weeks ago. Most were from some top small producers in the Maconnais from the 2006 and 2007 vintages (we’re trying to put our hands on a couple hundred cases of a St. Veran from Vergisson). Also a couple Petit Chablis and Chablis, although they finished at the bottom of the heap. There were twenty-five wines in all. But when we unveiled wine #2, we were shocked; not by the purity of the core of green apple and honeysuckle fruit, or by the longest, crispest finish on the table. We were shocked that this knockout Chardonnay came from Oregon — Chehalem’s new 2007 INOX.

What’s the secret behind INOX? First, the grapes are top flight; all low-yielding, expensive Dijon clone fruit pulled from the top vineyards (like Stoller and Chehalem) on prime hillside sites. But second, master winemaker Harry Peterson-Nedry kept the wood out of the kitchen (hence “INOX,” the French term for stainless steel tanks), thus magnifying the beautiful honeysuckle fruit that is typical of these superb grape sources. This is pure Chablisien Chardonnay. While it’s drinking beautifully now, that honeysuckle core will age into bitter honey — the benchmark flavor of great, cool climate Chardonnay.

The Math Behind the “Commercial” Chardonnays

The way in which most “commercial” Chardonnay is made has nothing to do with Chehalem INOX. For the Big Box Brands, wine is just another beverage, all a game of dollars and cents. While the formula may vary from brand to brand, the basic principle is much the same; manage cost as best as possible to give the consumer the impression that he’s drinking quality Chardonnay. Here’s how it’s done. First, so as to manage cost, they buy higher cropped, less concentrated, cheaper grapes. So as to give the impression of fruit intensity, the winemakers stop fermentation, leaving unfermented sugar in wines to sweeten them up (giving the impression of concentration). Then they hit the wine with plenty of sulphur to keep it stable. They dump wood chips into fermenters to artificially infuse flavors and aromas of new wood (a lot cheaper and a lot less expensive than buying new Francois Freres barrels at $800 a pop.) The residual sugar and wood flavor help to cover up the lack of physiological maturity in the raw ingredients. Hire a marketing to team to develop a slick label (expensive, but a one-time cost). Hire a team of well-groomed sales guys to run around the country, and trot out an $18 bottle that costs a small fraction of that to make.

Tasting Notes

“Bright, floral nose of green apple, honey and a touch of lemon. Pretty, vibrant tight core of honey fruit. Both elegant and powerful with lots of verve. Wonderfully bright and mineral with snappy acidity, arguing for continued cellaring. Excellent firm finish with acid balance that’s much more typical of Burgundy than the West Coast. Drink now for its Riesling-like freshness or age for up to six years when the tight kernel of fruit will turn into bitter honey; the benchmark of fine Dijon clone Chardonnay.”
–WineAccess, September 2008