Vineyard & Winery Management

March/April 2013

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MARKET WATCH TIM TEICHGRAEBER said. "Tom would drink wine occasionally, but red wine gave me migraines. It never even occurred to me to drink chardonnay – it was awful." She disliked chardonnay mostly because of the "smarmy" oak flavors that tended to come with it. Then she tried a new kind of chard. "I saw a bottle of Toad Hollow Unoaked Chardonnay (made in Sonoma County) and thought the label looked cute, so I brought it home and we both really liked it," said Meg. "It really switched our thinking. Then that ran out and we had to start hunting around for other unoaked chardonnays. I started taking notes and taking pictures so that I could remember what we liked and why we liked it." ALONG THE WINE ROAD Unoaked chardonnays such as Toad Hollow's offer consumers a fresh and affordable alternative to Chablis. "I think a lot of people used to like oaky chardonnay, and now they're realizing they don't like it anymore. It's easier to read the labels. They didn't used to differentiate between oaked and unoaked," added Tom. "French Chablis is lovely," Meg continued, "but it's quite a bit more expensive, generally. Pinot grigio is nice and sauvignon blanc is nice, but chardonnay has a nice taste. It's present. It's there." She appreciates the generosity of chardonnay – yet just doesn't care for the oak. The couple pours unoaked chardonnays for friends. "Whenever we have shared them with people, we have always turned them around. Once they taste it, every single time, they like it," said Meg. 26 V I N E YARD & WINERY MANAGEMENT | Mar - Apr 2013 While driving to their vacation cottage in Maine, the Gerrishes often pop into wineries along the way, discovering unoaked chardonnays from Virginia, New Jersey, New York and even Maine. In fact, the one made by Breakwater Vineyards in Owls Head is one of their favorites. In southwestern Virginia, Abingdon Vineyard & Winery is one of several Commonwealth producers to make both a conventional barrel-fermented and aged chardonnay and a stainless steel version, which it calls "Bare." "One of the things we get to do at the tasting room is to put an oaked and an unoaked sample in front of (visitors) and let them go back and forth between the two," explained Abingdon owner Bob Carlson. "Unless they're a firm 'oaked' person, they'll like the unoaked version because it has more of the fruit in it. We allow the oaked version to undergo malolactic fermentation, which we don't do for the unoaked … a lot of people are surprised at the difference between the two." rott. "We grow chardonnay, so we thought we might as well do it both ways and see what happens." What happened was that the Sharrotts took home a nice trophy. "We won Best Chardonnay at the 2009 Finger Lakes Wine Competition," said Eileen. "From then on, we said we're going to make this every year. It does very well in the tasting room. We explain it to people: There's a history of unoaked chardonnay and it started in Chablis, but if you like the California style, you'll probably like (our) barrel (aged) one. It's about 50/50. "Some will say, 'I never liked chardonnay, but I like this,' and some will say it doesn't have the buttery, oaky thing, so it can go either way. For me, I happen to like them both." At northwestern Michigan's Black Star Farms, Lee Lutes, head of winemaking, said he believes New Jersey's Sharrott Winery makes both an unoaked chardonnay and an oaked version. Sharrott Winery in New Jersey is another producer that eschews the gym, tan, laundry and newbarrel routine that built California's butter- and oak-bomb chardonnays of the 1990s. "My husband and I do go to France a lot and they (often) do it in the unoaked style, in stainless steel or concrete," said owner Eileen Sharw w w. v w m m e d i a . c o m

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