Comments on: The problem(s) with Chardonnay

By: larry

larry — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 20:47:31 +0000

It is very simple. Wine is not made for a bunch of so called experts. It is made for people to enjoy. If you take a group of people and have one bottle of the buttery and one bottle of the “crisp” and most people like the buttery then it must be the best. An expert is only one persons opinion. He could taste a 1ooo a year and it would still be an opinion. Some of you said that we should try to change the majority of peoples opinions becuase the minority likes soemthing differant. How crazy does that sound! Let the people enjoy what they like. Everyone is there own expert!

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By: steve

steve — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 16:17:45 +0000

Mark, there are reasons why a wine can taste like it has greater RS than it actually does. Without having recourse to a laboratory, the most a critic can say is that the wine tastes sweet, or tastes like it has RS. But I would not state categorically that a wine has RS because I don’t have the ability to test wines.

By: Mark Osmun

Mark Osmun — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 16:06:11 +0000

Charlie, if your testing methods found Kendall-Jackson VR Chardonnay to have 1% RS, then you should test your testing because it would be flawed. That wine has no more than 0.5 RS, if that.

By: Charlie Olken

Charlie Olken — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 16:19:12 +0000

I will agree that over-oaked, super sweet is a difficult style for me to like. If I want sweet, I would prefer Riesling.

But, I am not so sure about the comment on over-oaked. It seems to me that the majority of CA Chardonnay priced from $20 or so and up has seen more than a couple of days in good barrels and does not derive its character from chips or oak syrup. Moreover, the greater majority of those wines, including some from KJ (not Vint Res–the most recent one of which we tested at 1.0% RS) are fermented to dryness.

Now, it is not my place or anyone’s place to tell others what they should like or not like. But, I do have to insist that we not extend the fiction that CA is, by definition, overripe, overoaked, oversweet because anyone who deals with those wines on a regular basis can name hundreds of wineries whose products are nothing of the sort. “Big, oaky and buttery” do not mean sweet or overoaked.