The Dilemma Of Origin

 

I have been spending some effort on two of the most common wines found on the MW exam, chardonnay and pinot noir.  After extensive tastings, wide spread samples, different levels of quality, different geographic sources, in depth reading, and discussions with winemakers, what I have discovered is this…. It’s very difficult to pinpoint the origin on these wines blind.  In theory, the origin question is a question about climate.  The fruit quality and character should be able to provide you reasonable clues as to where it was grown.  I think that this was a rock solid argument in 1990 when California was always sunny and Burgundy had to cross their fingers to get to basic ripeness standards.  The challenge now is, despite the troglodytes clinging to the idea that climate change hasn’t happened, is that EVERYWHERE is generally warm or worse, has unpredictable seasons which lifts away the idea of “typicity”.  The Loire, which could ripen red wines in four years out of ten, spent most of the summer in 100F+ oven like conditions.  When “typical” becomes a moving target, how do you definitively point to a character in the wine and say, “Because this pinot has 14.5% ABV and is medium bodied, it must be from a warm climate.”?  Because you could be talking about the “balmy climate” of Gevry Chambertin just as easily as you are the Russian River. 

I just did a flight of four chardonnay, all of which were about the same price point of $25-$35.  Super premium but not luxury chardonnay, which in theory should be easier to figure out as opposed to $150 Fuck You chards.  I can get you a flight of crazed billionaire winery chardonnay from Argentina, Chile, Italy, and South Africa that you would have no hope in placing whatsoever if you gave me an unlimited budget.  A bunch of wines sitting at $30 should have a reasonable amount of intended oak character, selective fruit, and moderate short cuts in getting the wine in the bottle.  It should be what it is.  The wines I poured were Patrick Piuze “Terroir de Chablis” 2024, Antinori’s “Bramito della Sala” Umbria IT 2024, Bacus Clarion Chardonnay 2022 Willamette Valley OR, and Sandhi Santa Rita Hills CA 2023.  My thinking was the Chablis and Santa Rita bottles would be useful to compare as they were both cool climate, and I should be able to tell between cold climate Chablis and some oak influence on the Sandhi’s cool climate New World.  The Italian one was sort of a wild card, but it should be continental climate Old World and then the Willamette one should feel New World in comparison.  How did that go?  The only one I knew for sure was the Chablis due to the acid.  The others?  Shit, shuffle the deck and pick randomly.

If I had poured that group of chardonnays to any wine professional and said, “these are the four latest chardonnays from so-and-so in whatever region”, the most astute tasters would flag the Chablis and maybe question if it was an unoaked version of chardonnay and link the acid to early harvest.  The others would be taken at face value for being from slightly different vineyard sites.  Maybe you would need to toss in some soil gobbilty gook about soils and slopes, but based on what I see at industry events, it would be an easy sell.  Not everyone is a Bollinger Cup taster if ya get my drift.  The wine from Umbria tasted the most tropical.  The one from Oregon tasted like an aspirational Macon with a savory earthy finish.  The Santa Rita Hills could have been from NZ, a half dozen Australian sites, Walker Bay in South Africa, anywhere up and down the Pacific Coast and maybe Burgundy.  

Making it more challenging is the winemaking methods.  A decade+ ago you could reasonably say, “this is unoaked really good quality chardonnay with elevated acid, so it must be Chablis” and that played.  Now that same description could be applied to a winemaker embracing that style from Tasmania, Pfalz, Santa Rita, Chilean coastal sites, Marlborough, Niagara or even Ohio.  It’s the same with very well integrated oak from barrel ferments where that was a big alarm bell for Burgundy.  That’s impossible now as every fucking bullshit sell sheet on every winery’s wine wraps their arms around how fucking “Burgundian” they are because they toss their must in a barrel and let it rip.  I would argue that with chardonnay and pinot noir that winemaking methods are as much on display as the fruit depending on who made it and their end goals.

Think about pinot noir.  The moving parts include canopy management, harvest timing, yeast, stem inclusion, de-stemming, cold soak, fermentation temperature, cap management, maceration, aging vessel and length, level of oak toasting, etc.  It’s a minefield impacting the taste that goes well beyond origin of the fruit.  A deep cherry/red plum flavored pinot noir with 14% alcohol can be from anywhere now.  Then again, a tart floral peppery herbal style can just as easily be from a New World origin with a cooling influence where the winemaker picks early and uses lots of green stems as it could be the previous solid answer of “Baden” or “cool vintage Burgundy”.   That wine could just as easily be Finger Lakes or English now too.

What is frustrating writing these dry note answers is predictability has vanished, especially with chardonnay and pinot noir.  A previous tasting note written along the lines of “generous primary fruit driven palate is consistent with New World origin” isn’t really true any longer.  When is the last time you had a 2022 Macon Village with plump apple and had to question, “Wait… Is this even Old World?”.  Unless you have the context of a similar price point Cali/Aussie chardonnay next to it that has some RS on it, good luck.  So now that automatic sorting mechanism of “It’s fruity so it must be New World” doesn’t work.  I think I mentioned that podcast I listened to where two of the world’s most expert palates tasting Burgundy and NZ chardonnay had trouble putting blind wines into either country much less the more tightly regimented Village/region that is expected in an exam setting.  Unless the examiners are very careful in their wine selection, this exam is no different than picking the winner of a Saints v Panthers game with the same flimsy reasoning.  

Much like the doomsday scenario of ever gambling on the Carolina Panthers, a similar doomsday scenario awaits if you call a $25 Tasmanian chardonnay a Premier Cru Chablis (or vice versa).  Not only do you lose most of the origin points after you funnel out of Chablis (or even worse, “New World”), but the consumer positioning is wildly different too.  A $65 premier cru Chablis has a very different buyer than a $25 unoaked Tasmanian chardonnay buyer, and thus is sold in totally different types of restaurants, retail spaces, and even countries.  Is that bitterness on the back palate the smoky sea shell flint from Chablis?  Or is that Tasmanian chardonnay reductive because it was bottled under a savage screw cap?  Is that “minerality” which is pointing Chablis, or does that not really mean anything because most people use the word “mineral” to describe a restrained linear palate that doesn’t have anything to divert your attention like oak, lees, or skin contact?  Now you have to hedge the whole goddamn thing on if the acid is “really high” like Chablis is stereotypically or is it “kinda high” like one of the recent warm vintages?  Hey man, don’t look at me because I’m trying to figure it out too…