Wine Chronicles: Chardonnay, Un-Parkerized — Sonoma Coast Winemakers Chase Balance Again
By Dan Berger
Today’s Article Summary: For decades, California chardonnay drifted toward a rich, soft, heavily oaked style that often muted acidity and regional character, influenced in part by critical taste and market demand. The article describes how techniques such as later harvesting and widespread malolactic fermentation helped produce that profile, even as the pursuit of white Burgundy models sometimes sidelined site expression. It then points to a countertrend: more producers, especially in cooler coastal areas, are picking earlier and aiming for higher natural acidity and clearer vineyard identity. Winemaker David Ramey is quoted describing a loosening of stylistic pressure and a renewed openness to making wine in a more restrained, earlier-era mode.
SONOMA COUNTY, Calif. — Consider all the myriad ways that winemakers have devised over the centuries to “improve” chardonnay grape juice as they convert it into one of the world’s finest and most honored white wines.
So it is no surprise that for decades it has taken on a complex style that struggles to replicate the best white wines of France’s illustrious terroir-driven Burgundy district.
To many people, chardonnay is the world’s pinnacle achievement in white winemaking. But in the last 30 years in California, it has changed from what it originally was. I believe that today it is hardly recognized because of mankind’s infernal meddling with it. But world-class winemaker David Ramey believes it will assume its former role as a balanced, classic wine. In fact, it already has. (See below.)
The best chardonnays produced in the world of the 1980s tended to display their regional characteristics, as did most of the finest areas in Burgundy. A great Batard-Montrachet smelled more like Batard than it did the grape that produced it; a quality Meursault displayed its Meursault-ness.
Amorphous chardonnays, such as those with a “California” appellation, almost never display any regional-ness, nor would any chardonnay purist care if they did. I believe that a great chardonnay should display that element if it can. But some California winemakers just want to make something that is widely impressive.
Regional identity has always been a hallmark of the best Burgundy wines, but it is a concept so foreign in this country as to be nonexistent over the last 30 or 40 years.
Decades ago, some people compared the top California chardonnays with the ultimate in Burgundy, which arguably was Le Montrachet, which Wikipedia says “produces what many consider to be the greatest dry white wine in the world.” (Germany might disagree.) Most Montrachets cost a lot, and the best are in extreme demand from wine-lovers. Most examples display a richness, a succulence, ostentatious fruit and balancing acidity that establishes an esteemed style.
Montrachet was so widely appreciated that it soon became popular in this country, despite high pricing, and just about every U.S. winery that made a chardonnay wanted to replicate it in form.
But as California winemakers tried to make their chardonnays mimic Montrachet, even for inexpensive wines, a key tenet in the French arsenal, the ability to display regional distinctiveness (terroir, the sense of place), was abandoned here. It is this element, regionality, that seems to be coming back to the best California chardonnays after decades when a “sense of place” was ignored.
Today I see more wineries that are getting their chardonnay fruit from regions that are distinctive, such as Oak Knoll, Freestone, Mount Veeder and Santa Barbara. Each has its own aromatic and taste signatures. A few self-determining winemakers have tried to hold true to their house images with chardonnay.
Some have avoided allowing their chardonnays to go through complete malolactic fermentation, keeping acids up. This includes Grgich Hills, Chateau Montelena and Mayacamas.
But for decades regionality was ignored, and softness was praised.
Numerous U.S. wine critics, including the most influential, never really recognized the concept of terroir or of structure (tartness) in chardonnay. Nor did they lessen their praise for almost all soft and even buttery wines. To them, succulence and richness were devoutly to be desired. By contrast, tartness, austerity or minerality were portrayed as evil. Any chardonnay with those traits was roundly dismissed with a low score.
Most U.S. critics gave overwhelmingly positive reviews to some wines that I saw as egregious Montrachet parodies. Decades ago a Napa friend poured me a chardonnay that had gotten a score of 100 from the famed critic Robert Parker and was made by Parker’s favorite winemaker. My friend adored the squishy-soft flabby wine with the odd aroma. I never told him that it was spoiled (hydrogen sulfide). I just said it was “interesting.”
By the 1990s, California chardonnay’s richness had become a mandatory tactic, even for wines selling for $10 or $12 per bottle. Wine collectors disparaged two hugely successful and inexpensive brands of chardonnay, suggesting that they were sweet. This was clearly a design of the two producers. Most Americans loved these wines, which were widely popular. Each sold millions of cases.
(A Napa winemaker told me, “Most Americans say they like dry wine, but they drink sweet.”)
From the 1990s until recently, chardonnay grew even more sorry as wineries began to harvest later and later, increasing alcohol levels and further reducing acidities, which gave chardonnay even more softness and sweetness than it previously had. Acids were extremely low, so the wines were like cocktails, near-frozen and a bit sweet.
For decades it was difficult for me to find dry chardonnays that were balanced with good acidity, had subtle oak and displayed the winery’s effort to create a butter bomb. Even some highly regarded expensive chardonnays were lackluster. Numerous industry people began to admit to me privately that things had gone too far. Winemakers often said they were tired of making what they called “Parkerized” wines.
Decades ago a Napa Valley producer described to me his well-regarded chardonnay: “I just make it. I don’t have to drink it — and I don’t.” He added, “but it sells.”
As chardonnay sales flattened about 10 years ago, I began hearing that winemakers were slowly curbing their efforts to make bigger, softer wines. Such comments were so widespread that I was heartened and began to investigate the rumored “new chardonnays.”
Supposedly they were lower in alcohol. Supposedly they were less oaky, which many winemakers told me was because French oak barrels were so expensive that they were a drag on profits. Supposedly the wines were less buttery and had more citrus-y elements that were related to fruit. Supposedly they were better balanced.
I couldn’t find many. What I did find were wines that had nearly as much oak, which I believe came from aging the wines in contact with oak chips or staves. Acids were still deficient. Later harvesting seemed to be just as common as it had been. Alcohols were still 14.5% or more. Some were sweet. The word that high-end chardonnays were coming back into fashion appeared to be a myth.
But some winemakers dedicated themselves to making wines from cooler vineyards, picking earlier and emphasizing not only lower alcohol levels but also much better structure so that their chardonnays could work as they had originally been conceived — on the dinner table.
David Ramey is one of California’s finest winemakers. His Ramey Wine Cellars in Healdsburg is acclaimed for his precision and adherence to a vineyard-sensitive style that honors tradition as well as Sonoma County fruit from the best regions (cool sites) in the county.
His website has on the first page the phrase “Classically Made,” and that style earned him a commendation from Reps. Mike Thompson and Jared Huffman for his “longtime contributions to the wine community.”
David and I have had a few disagreements over the decades, which I have always respected. Our discussions have been spirited. One brouhaha resulted in my better understanding of cabernet sauvignon. I probably had been a little harsh in my initial comments about it. In time I realized that Ramey was on far more solid ground than I had been.
I have usually appreciated his wines because he is a superb craftsman, and almost always I could see his wines’ distinctiveness as well as their personalities that related to where the grapes were grown.
In a recent column, I had stated that chardonnay remained rather boring. David doesn’t hide his feelings when he disagrees with me. We chatted about a comment I had made in print about the lackluster performance of some higher-alcohol, too-soft, “hot” chardonnays.
He said classic, balanced chardonnays were coming back into style. Notably, he said, from the Sonoma Coast, which David believes is a sensational region for chardonnay because of its cooler climate.
“Now that Robert Parker has retired,” David told me, “I think a lot of winemakers kind of feel that the handcuffs have come off and they can continue making wine like they did 30 or 40 years ago.” He added that there was one winemaker whose chardonnays always got extremely high Parker scores, “even though they were 16% alcohol and they really weren’t” wines that represented balance or much food compatibility.
He said that style of chardonnay is quickly going out of favor and that when quality winemakers work diligently with growers and then harvest the fruit earlier than had been the norm a decade ago, the result usually is far better structure and balance.
David has an enormously long resumé that includes two long stints (1979 and 1989) working in France.
“They’ve been making wine for a thousand years,” he said, “and I wanted to figure out what they knew.”
The definitive work on the wines of Burgundy is Clive Coates’ magnum opus “Côte d’Or,” a 1,007-page 1997 analysis of the district, 78% of which is planted to pinot noir. Coates says that Burgundy is one of the most difficult wine districts in the world to get a handle on, and that although he visited more than 250 properties every year in a decade of researching his book, he doubted he would ever really know Burgundy as he should.
Throughout his book, Coates rarely assigns style or personality traits to regions, preferring instead to emphasize how each property displays its unique character. In California, Ramey is among the best at doing this microanalysis before he agrees to acquire fruit. And it also means he and his daughter, Claire, work closely with each of their growers.
One thing Ramey has always prided himself on is working with exceptional vineyards located in colder regions. Almost all of the chardonnay is from the western Sonoma Coast.
He suggested staging a blind tasting of several Sonoma Coast chardonnays to prove that several producers, not only he, were doing a much better job with this grape variety and that the wines are much better structured than a decade ago.
The tasting was conducted in early February at his winery in Healdsburg. David purchased the wines at retail; I paid for them. (That turned out to be more painful than I had anticipated because he included three white Burgundies that by themselves cost me almost $300. And one was spoiled!)
During the tasting, conducted double-blind, I noted that most of the 10 wines were better balanced but also that the average price of the California wines was rather high, nearly $70 a bottle. He said that the best chardonnays often come from vineyards that don’t produce much tonnage, and thus profitability is always questionable.
But he added that times change, and the richer style of wine that once was popular may no longer be appropriate.
“Many winemakers today don’t feel as locked into the style that Parker appreciated,” he said, “so many of them now believe they can express more of what the vineyard gives them.”
I believe consumers will be better served by a return to the older, more finesse-oriented and complex chardonnay format, though some consumers may have been so carefully “educated” in the richer, more opulent style that they may continue to seek it.
As a result, it may take a long time for the better-balanced wines to catch on with some who regularly consume chardonnay, especially because winemakers have been making softer, sweeter, simpler chardonnays for so long that mainly appealed to one person.
Of the 10 wines that I tasted in the blind tasting, four of them were from Ramey. I rated the two best as those from the Platt Vineyard. One wine was Ramey’s 2023 “Platt Vineyard” Chardonnay ($75). It was relatively rich with excellent acidity, and it improved after an hour of aeration.
The other was a 2023 chardonnay from a new winery named Platt Vineyard ($90). It was my first-place wine. It was slightly more delicate and nicely balanced. Also scoring high was 2023 Hirsch Chardonnay, Sonoma Coast ($75). It also had good balancing acidity.
The wines all exhibited similar characteristics with more fruit noticeable than in many Sonoma Coast chardonnays from a decade ago. All were complex with attractive citrusy notes and were crisp.
The rumors of chardonnay returning to its roots may have just begun. The 2023 vintage was an exceptionally good one for most wines because it was so consistently cool. (The 2025 vintage was even cooler; in some areas it was nearly as cool as 2011.) However, chardonnay is one of the few white wines that takes on fascinating complexity with a little bit of age, and the 2023s that are now hitting shelves are still quite backward and in need of a year or two more maturity.
Cool weather provided wineries the opportunity to capture more natural acidity. As time in the bottle will prove, the wines’ ability to age will not be compromised by the weather conditions. This is an encouraging sign for those of us who like chardonnay that we can properly pour with a meal.
—
Dan Berger has been writing about wine since 1975.
Wine Discovery:
2023 Ramey Chardonnay, Fort Ross-Seaview, Sonoma Coast ($50): The striking thing about this wine is that instead of how some wineries might have harvested (at about 24° Brix, average sugar), David and Claire chose to pick at 21.9° from this vineyard whose soil is a combination of sandstone and shale. Instead of an alcohol level over 14% as the older, richer style might have been, this wine is only 13.5%, and as a result aromatics are more oriented toward the cooler climate, with some minerality and extraordinary depth from careful aging in French oak, which gave the wine a slight Burgundian lilt. From the Ramey website: “We press the fruit whole cluster for delicacy. Native-yeast and full native malolactic fermentation take place in barrel, with sur lies bâtonnage (lees stirring). After aging 12 months in 10% new French oak barrels (François Frères & Demptos), the chardonnay was traditionally fined for clarity and texture during the following harvest and bottled without filtration.” Filtration removes critical elements from any wine, which I believe has a negative effect on its potential to age. —
Dan Berger Review.
Explore These Related Articles:
Browse All Sonoma County Features Stories
Browse All Napa Valley Features Stories
Browse All Lake County Features Stories
The views, opinions and data presented in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy, position or perspective of Sonoma County Features or its editorial team. Any content provided by our authors is their own and is not intended to malign any group, organization, company or individual.
