Two white wines, poured blindly from bottles hidden in bags, can seem to come from entirely different grapes. The first is pale, almost silver, and smells of lemon peel, green apple, and wet stone after rain. The second glows gold and smells of baked pear, melted butter, toasted bread, and vanilla. One seems made for a dozen oysters, the other for roast chicken in a cream sauce. When the bags come off, both labels say Chardonnay, and the look of surprise is one that nearly everyone who studies wine remembers.

Chardonnay is less defined by a single recognizable flavor than by its remarkable ability to express the vineyard, the climate, and the decisions of the winemaker.

On its own, Chardonnay has a fairly quiet aroma, which is why it can taste like so many different wines. Nearly every flavor in the glass can be traced to a source, whether the warmth of the vineyard, the bacteria that soften its acidity, the spent yeast it rests on, or the barrel it may or may not see. Following those sources one at a time, from the vineyard into the cellar, explains how the same grape can suggest oyster shell in Chablis, hazelnut and brioche in Chassagne-Montrachet, and bright citrus edged with toast on the Sonoma Coast. It also gives anyone choosing a bottle a far better chance of finding the glass they actually want.

Cooler vineyard environments generally encourage slower ripening and preserve acidity, producing Chardonnay with characteristics reminiscent of green apples, lemons, and fresh citrus. Chablis pictured above.

A Blank Canvas From Burgundy

Chardonnay's family tree was a mystery until 1999, when researchers at the University of California, Davis, finally traced it. Working with French colleagues, Carole Meredith and John Bowers used DNA fingerprinting to show that Chardonnay is a cross of Pinot and Gouais Blanc, a coarse, productive variety held in such low regard that medieval authorities tried to ban it. The same parents gave rise to sixteen known varieties, Aligoté and Gamay among them. Chardonnay's homeland is Burgundy, and a village called Chardonnay still sits in the hills of the Haut-Mâconnais. From there the grape has spread to dozens of countries, partly because it grows readily almost anywhere and partly because its mild character takes so well to the winemaker's hand.

Climate shapes Chardonnay more than almost anything else. In cool places such as Chablis, where spring frost can linger into May, the grapes ripen slowly and hold their acidity, and the wine tastes of lemon, green apple, and white flowers. With more sun, the flavors move toward peach, melon, and pineapple, the body fills out, alcohol climbs, and acidity softens, so growers in warm sites often pick early to keep the wine fresh. The shift shows even within Burgundy, from the taut wines of the north to the rounder ones of Pouilly-Fuissé in the Mâconnais. Vintage matters as well, since a hot summer in a cool place can blur the very freshness that made the place famous.

The Cellar Writes Most of the Story

Once the grapes are picked, the winemaker takes over, and many of Chardonnay's best-known flavors begin in the cellar. After the yeasts finish, a gentler conversion called malolactic fermentation can begin, as lactic acid bacteria turn the wine's sharp malic acid, the tartness of a green apple, into softer lactic acid, the acid found in yogurt. Along the way they release diacetyl, the compound long used to give butter-flavored popcorn its smell. A winemaker can let the process run fully, allow only part of it, or block it to keep a wine taut.

Time on the lees, the spent yeast cells that settle after fermentation, adds bread dough, brioche, and roasted nuts, and stirring them back into the wine, a practice called bâtonnage, builds a creamy texture. Some of Burgundy's most admired producers, Coche-Dury and Roulot among them, also court a flinty, struck-match note that comes from sulfur compounds formed by yeast.

Oak adds another layer of flavor, much of it created when coopers toast the inside of each barrel over an open fire. Toasting raises levels of vanillin, the main flavor of the vanilla bean, along with guaiacol, which smells of smoke, and browned sugars that read as toast and caramel. The wood also carries eugenol, the scent of clove, and oak lactones, which smell of coconut and run much higher in American oak than in the French oak favored in Burgundy. A new barrel gives the most of everything, and after a few vintages it adds far less flavor and mostly gentle oxygen and texture. Many winemakers ferment Chardonnay in barrel, which tends to fold the oak into the wine more smoothly than aging alone, while those chasing pure fruit reach for stainless steel or concrete.

In warmer growing regions, increased grape ripeness can produce Chardonnay with fuller body and flavor profiles suggesting ripe peaches, melon, pineapple, and tropical fruit. Sonoma County pictured above.

How Far Is Chablis From the Sonoma Coast?

Chablis sits at the northern tip of Burgundy, on a band of Kimmeridgian limestone packed with tiny fossil oysters. Most Chablis ferments in stainless steel, and even domaines such as Raveneau and Vincent Dauvissat, which age much of their wine in older barrels, use wood that adds little flavor of its own.

The result is Chardonnay kept close to the fruit, with lemon, green apple, and a saline, gunflint edge that sharpens in Grand Crus such as Les Clos and Vaudésir. Farther south, in the Côte de Beaune, Chassagne-Montrachet shares the Grand Crus Montrachet and Bâtard-Montrachet with neighboring Puligny and holds Criots-Bâtard-Montrachet entirely within its borders. Here the wine usually ferments in barrel, with a portion of new oak, malolactic fermentation, and months on the lees, and premier crus such as Morgeot and Les Caillerets show white peach, hazelnut, brioche, and toast. Ramonet, Bernard Moreau, and Pierre-Yves Colin-Morey are among the names to know.

California's Sonoma Coast is cool country, with fog, wind, and heavy winter rain rolling in off the Pacific. Flowers farms Camp Meeting Ridge at about 1,300 feet within the Fort Ross-Seaview AVA, and Hirsch, Littorai, and Peay work similarly cold sites. Their Chardonnays tend to be lean and bright, with lemon, grapefruit, and a salty edge, and the oak stays in the background. Warmer parts of California produce the broad, buttery, generously oaked style that defined the grape for many drinkers in the 1980s and 1990s. The Sonoma Coast AVA, drawn in 1987, is also vast, so a label naming a ridge or vineyard says far more about the wine than the appellation alone.

Few grape varieties demonstrate the relationship between nature and winemaking as clearly as Chardonnay. Its flavors are not simply the result of where the grapes are grown, nor are they entirely creations of the cellar.

The Takeaway

In the end, Chardonnay's flavors come from two places, the vineyard and the cellar. The vineyard sets the fruit and the acidity, from the lemon and green apple of Chablis to the peach and pineapple of warmer sites. The cellar adds most of the rest, with butter from malolactic fermentation, bread and nuts from the lees, flint from yeast in a reductive cellar, and vanilla, smoke, toast, clove, and coconut from the barrel.

Once those pieces are familiar, a bottle becomes easier to predict than its reputation suggests. Chablis, most Mâcon, and wines labeled unoaked lean toward fruit and stone. Côte de Beaune villages such as Chassagne-Montrachet, Puligny-Montrachet, and Meursault usually bring barrel and lees into the picture. A cool-climate California bottle from a named ridge or vineyard often lands somewhere between the two.

When buying a bottle, two questions are worth asking. Did the wine go through full malolactic fermentation, and how much new oak did it see? A good wine shop or sommelier can usually answer both, and the answers say more about the glass than the grape's name on the label. Temperature matters at the table as well. Served too cold, a fine Chardonnay hides its fruit and texture, while a few degrees warmer lets the richer, barrel-aged styles show their butter, toast, and nuts, and keeps the leaner ones from tasting thin. Pouring a Chablis beside a Chassagne-Montrachet, at the same temperature, is the quickest way to taste all of it at once.