30 US CHARDONNAYS
The statistics don’t lie: people everywhere still love to drink Chardonnay. And across the wine-growing states of the US, you’ll find a spectacular diversity of styles. Make a beeline for these 30 delicious picks from California and beyond
Chardonnay’s unique appeal lies in a certain blank-canvas malleability. At its core, it’s a wine of transparency, a mirror to terroir and the brushstrokes of a winemaker’s technique. In the US, however, its hallmark style – big, buttery Californiaesque wines plump with tropical fruit and new-oak flavours – is subject to nearly as much scorn as adoration.
Yet Chardonnay is America’s most popular white wine among consumers by far, its market share exceeding 15%, according to Silicon Valley Bank’s 2023 State of the US Wine Industry report, with Pinot Grigio following at just above 8% (SipSource data to September 2022).
Despite its enduring popularity, the basic prototype of the American Chard historically capitalised on a cheerful yet generic expression of place and fabrication. The most commercially successful American Chardonnays are sun-soaked yet ubiquitous wines that are largely replicable wherever sufficient ripeness can be achieved. But, looking behind the shadow of America’s big-brand Chardonnay, you’ll find an entirely different landscape of diverse, impactful Chardonnay has flourished.
If it’s been a while since you’ve taken a good, long look at American Chardonnay, things will not be how they were even a decade ago. Overwhelmingly, wines are sharper these days. A few pounds lighter and less reliant on make-up, they’re digging increasingly inwards, not outwards, for inspiration. Soil and site-driven, America’s most dynamic Chardonnays are keen, often hyperspecific expressions of this country’s remarkable diversity.
ACROSS THE NATION
California is still the touchstone of American Chardonnay. But it’s also home to some of the most thrillingly divergent expressions of the variety. Tasted blind, they can be enigmatic puzzles of topography, exposition, climate and soil. The electric Chardonnay coaxed from wind-blasted pockets of the Santa Rita Hills couldn’t be more different from the rich, earthen Chards of old, low-yield vines atop the Santa Cruz Mountains.
In Oregon’s Willamette Valley, a cool-climate region where the Pacific ocean tempers long, dry growing seasons and rainy winters, comparisons to Burgundy are increasingly difficult to avoid. Oregon is a hotbed for the Burgundian grape varieties and home to increasing numbers of high-profile transplants from Drouhin, Jadot, Méo- Camuzet and more. ‘No one’s interested in making facsimiles of Burgundy,’ says Sashi Moorman, the California winemaker who, with b
