Tasting Again for the First Time or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Chardonnay
Class transcript:
Uh, welcome all, admitting everyone here as they come in, uh, just a word of warning here, um, you are, uh, all you're all muted, uh, it is, it is nothing personal, um, it is, uh, just the fact that this quickly went from a liberal arts style seminar into a massive state school style, uh, freshman, you know, kind of survey class, so, um, it is just the fact that, um, I've had to, uh, mute everyone, uh, so that, um, you know there aren't a cacophony of voices, uh, drowning me out; I encourage you all to participate, uh, via the chat, uh, window and I have, uh, help from, uh, one Joan. Pleasure Byron pleasure, sir, uh, it is a pleasure, all, uh, albeit, uh, virtually here.
thank you so much for joining us um i'm gonna give everyone a few more minutes um to uh join the chat uh while um we wait uh for that uh i just wanted uh to just go over provisioning here so um we have uh two wines we should have two wines and the idea there is that um tasting things one against the other uh gives you a bit of a dramatic foil um for the sake of one wine uh against another and i find that's a very uh illuminating way uh to taste um people to learn more about one wine uh by having uh its opposite to uh contrast it to now um i have a pair of wines here uh these are the ones that i recommended um and uh they're from macarthur beverages Um, that's not to say that uh, this class is lost on you if you don't have these two wines, um, whatever you have to try against you know other um, I encourage you, um, to uh, you know use those wines and uh, the idea is that you know you're trying to develop a fuller sense of why these are what they are so getting beyond you know just notion of you know liking someone or not, uh, not with you, um, and uh, digging deeper and getting a fuller voice, getting a fuller sense of you know why this wine tastes the way it does, that's what we're hoping um to kind of gain uh ultimately um out of this uh particular lesson today, um, you're gonna need your two bottles.
Uh, you're going to want them uh at temp um, and I encourage you to pour yourself a glass um, if you haven't already, obviously. We'll be um, kind of going through uh, for the sake of this exercise, how to taste uh, and how to taste this wine analytically, breaking down you know sight, smell, and taste um, you know each of those dimensions for these wines. But that's not to say that you can't get a head start uh, however you like wine class is infinitely more enjoyable uh, with wine than uh, without so I don't want to enforce uh, any you know kind of uh, you know abstention um, before we actually launch into class and give everyone a chance to experience.
That appreciates it like it didn't take long um to enter uh the meeting room um, thank you all again um for joining us this is you know hugely uh exciting um, I should be said never done anything like this, I'm like the worst millennial ever um, I don't really have a social media feed outside of the restaurant feeds um and uh I don't have much cause to use digital meeting platforms but we live in a a strange world and uh I'm excited to use this technology to connect with our members and uh I'll go ahead and uh I'll also pass it over to you with all of you virtually as opposed to in a restaurant, proper. Question one more minute here.
While everyone is arriving, yes, Joan, so someone asked, 'Is there a good substitute for a second Chardonnay if you don't have two?' Oh, that's an excellent question. Thank you, panelists, for adding that. Um, I would say go kind of steal big and steal little for the sake of these wines, so find something that is lighter in ABV if that's your Chardonnay, if you're you know below 13% alcohol, find a wine that's above 13% alcohol, find a white wine that's above 13% alcohol to make your exemplar, you know, kind of a warmer climate bigger bolder white and vice versa. If the Chardonnay that you're using is above 13% alcohol, you know, find something. That is below if that's available to you, so you have two wines that are stylistic foils that you can play against each other for the sake of this class.
So we have quite a few participants, this is again hugely exciting; there are currently one hundred ninety-two people in this meeting room. Thank you all so much for joining up, let's do this! So welcome, all I thank you for giving me something to do first and foremost. I have been in the midst of a bit of an existential crisis I'm a wine guy without guests to serve without corks to pull; I have no raison d'être. In the midst of this crisis, so I'm thrilled to be able to lend my services. I'll be It's virtually, and I have been overwhelmed by the response. Thank you all for signing up! I thought this would be a few dozen people, and it has ballooned quickly into, you know, almost 200 at this point, and that is, you know, humbling.
And I'm incredibly grateful that you all want to do this for me. To join in, um, you know I think it speaks to just how bored everyone is, uh, also, uh, at home, uh, there's just not a lot, uh, to do and you can only watch so much Tiger King, uh, sadly, um, uh, just so you all know we're maintaining a chat feed here, um, I have, uh, Jones help, um, our operations director Joan Kim is in the mix and she will be helping me, um, monitor the chat and, uh, directing me to, uh, you know relevant questions, good questions uh as they arise, um, I will be uh giving the chat a look over at the end of this session, uh, to the best of my ability and addressing those questions in a follow-up email, uh, tomorrow along with some additional links uh for you all, um, if you want to dive deeper uh down this uh wine rabbit hole together, um, I am broadcasting live from my basement, 756 Hobart Place, Northwest, This is a bit like Wayne's World when it comes to a wine podcast, a special uh welcome to uh the staff of Tail Up Goats and Revelers Hour, and all of you playing the game within. a game um that is uh hashtag stay at home uh wine school uh good luck uh to you all um um we are uh going to kick it off here uh with a bit of uh verse um and uh you know the synopsis of the wine podcast uh wine podcast uh wine podcast uh wine podcast uh wine podcast not to be surprised uh to everyone uh just you know as a broader overview uh lesson number one uh is tasting again for the first time or how i learned to stop worrying uh and love chardonnay we are hoping to um taste more analytically uh through this exercise um you know getting beyond you know just the surface level do i like this wine do i not like this wine and you know thinking more analytically about why this wine is what it is the forces that shaped it uh in the vineyard and in the cellar and that ultimately determine uh what goes uh into our glass and then you know the secondary purpose to gain a fuller appreciation of an amazing grape um in chardonnay uh that gets you know uh reviled um because of uh you know certain excesses um that uh you know are lamentable but there's so much chardonnay out there it's such a versatile grape it is worth uh appreciating um so for the sake of our verse um i've got a bit of poetry i have um these goofy visual aids um a la uh wayne's world um uh you may or may not be able To read this um you know we're doing it live here hopefully this works hopefully it'll give you something to stare at other than uh me um but uh first bit of verse here from Gerald Manly Hopkins or Father Hopkins the Jesuit priest um Glory be this is called Up-ward Beauty, it should be said uh Glory be to God for dappled things for skies of couple colour as a brindled cow for rose moles all in stipple upon trout that swim through the dark wall, Chestnut Falls finches' wings landscape plotted and pieced fold fallow and plow and all trades their gear and tackle and trim all things counter original spare strange whatever is fickle. Freckled, who knows how with swift, slow, sweet, sour, a dazzle, dim he fathers forth whose beauty is past change; praise him. Um, one of my favorite poets here at Manly Hopkins' uh, he plays with sprung rhyme and lines of the Jesuit priest, the Jesuit priest, the Jesuit priest, the Jesuit priest, the Jesuit priest, the Jesuit priest, the Jesuit priest, the Jesuit priest, the Jesuit priest, in an amazing way. Um, uh, just to you know analyze the poem here and hopefully um, you guys aren't going anywhere i haven't noticed a mass exodus uh from the chat room as of yet um, but uh, you know just to give you a fuller sense of that poem.
Pied beauty, the word 'pied' itself comes from the Middle English for magpie, um, and uh the original notion here is uh black and white, um, so uh various seeming like the magpie, um, itself, um, and uh father God and father, but whether you realize that they're not uh, I mean it was just the etymology of the word, um, of the a or so our uh, um, we have species league on on the discipline accent uh, you know, you're good at Tri toujoursles Cristo uh, practitioner or the there we go, we got an elk that's a RuPaul T como here with a presence of civilization before we dive into the individual wines. So this is first map. I love wine maps, deep dives into wine nerdery here. This is one of my favorite wine maps.
We're considering the varietal Chardonnay. Should be said, I don't want to put the cart before the horse here, all grape varietals are not unlike breeds of dogs. They come from the same species, Vitis vinifera. And Vitis originated in the high caucuses between the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea on this map, which is in Spanish. Neither here nor there. But you see Georgia here, or the region in and around Georgia, is the birthplace of all fine wine. And the grape Vitis vinifera spread from there starting 8,000 years ago. All the varietals that we know and love developed much later, well into the last couple thousand years. Chardonnay is a relatively new entrant onto the wine scene. Even in its historic home in Burgundy, it wasn't widely planted until the 19th century.
Chardonnay has a fascinating lineage. It is the offspring of two varietals, one of which is hugely celebrated, Pinot. Pinot is actually a family of grapes, the most well-known of which is Pinot Noir. Pinot Noir was brought into life by the monks that occupied Burgundy. And through a series of very careful viticultural interventions, they worked with a number of different vines and isolated Pinot as the greatest among them and best suited to their corner of the world. And other grapes, as early as the 15th century, were outlawed in Burgundy. And so, Pinot Noir was brought into the world by the monks of Burgundy to the exclusion of Pinot Noir. Now, the other parent of Chardonnay, being a more humble varietal called Guaibronk.
Guaibronk originally from the Balkans, originally from modern-day Croatia, and brought by the Romans to modern-day Burgundy, where the environs are in there and around. And the moneyed monks of Burgundy were planting Pinot on their choicest hillsides. The hill being the greatest place to plant their grapes. The peasants planted Gwaiblonk in the valleys. It was a much higher-yielding grape, a much more vigorous grape than Pinot. And there are all sorts of grapes that came about through the interaction of the humble Gwaiblonk and the noble Pinot Noir. Aligoté, Gamay, Melon de Bourgogne, and most famously, our Chardonnay. So that is where the grape itself comes from. Now considering some of its individual traits here, Chardonnay, hugely malleable. It is a very precocious grape. You can grow it almost anywhere, on almost any type of soil.
It tends to prefer some types of soil, as opposed to others. But it grows almost anywhere. And it is a relatively early ripener, which is useful especially in colder climates for the sake of turning out wines in more marginal kinds of years. And it's also very vigorous. If you want to make good Chardonnay, you have to work very hard against that to limit the yields. But Chardonnay hugely fascinated me because it's almost a different grape depending on where you grow it. So in a cooler climate, it has all of these citrusy, chalkier kind of flavors. And as it gets progressively warmer, you move into this kind of like riper, orchard fruit realm. And warmer still, and you get into this like lush Carmen Miranda, you know, tropicalia that you would never identify with the cooler climate version of the same.
And, you know, that's what we're going to really explore for the sake of today's exercise. And next up, most kind of considerably more satisfying part of this exercise, we're going to consider how we would taste this individual kind of expression of Chardonnay that we're looking at. Now, I'm going to start with my Chablis. And I'll have a word for you in a moment about Chablis itself and what makes it a special place for Chardonnay. It should be said, again, not to put the cart before the horse, that Chardonnay equals Chablis. The French tend to think in terms of point of origin for their wines. So Chardonnay is the noble grape, is the grape of choice in a lot of different corners of France, most famously in Burgundy, but also in Chablis.
And to say Chablis connotes Chardonnay. You were just talking about a geographical point of origin as opposed to a grape varietal. So it's worth noting that they are one in the same for the sake of this exercise. Now, we are going to start here with the three dimensions of taste when it comes to evaluating wine. And we are going to begin with, for my sake, Chablis. Now, if you didn't acquire a Chablis for yourself, start with the lighter of the two wines that you have, lighter in terms of alcohol at the very least. So your lower ABV wine, let's begin there for the sake of this exercise, whatever that may be. For me, it happens to be Chablis. So I'm going to start there.
So I do have a glass of wine out of you that magically materialized. This is my Chablis. Chablis, one of life's great joys. And I think a lot of people who think they don't like Chardonnay try Chablis for the first time and come to appreciate it differently. Now, for the sake of tasting, we're going to think in terms of the three senses that we bring to bear when evaluating a wine. And they are sight, smell, and taste. Now, they are not all created equal. Smell, by far, is the most important among them. And it's impossible to quantify these things. But depending on how you break this down, the people who will say 90% of your experience of a wine is dictated by smell. I don't know who's enumerating that.
But smell is more important than any of those other senses. That's not to say that we can't derive meaningful conclusions about a wine through the mere act of looking at it, though. And that's where we're going to start. So I want to look at a few things for the sake of this glass of wine. So obviously, you have the color. For the sake of my Chablis, and it can help to use something white to look at the wine against for the sake of this exercise. So if you have a white sheet of paper, that can be a useful backdrop for this exercise. If not, c'est la vie. Chardonnay can produce wines that are deep and golden. This particular Chablis is more straw colored. You have the color itself.
But then, even more interestingly, you have the play of color. And we're going to look at this wine as the color plays from the center to the edge of the glass. And it's hard to get a sense of that with my camera. But you want to look in the center and get a sense of how the color evolves from that midpoint to the edge. And if you're dealing with a younger wine, as I am in a 2018 Chablis, the wine will get much more transparent as you go from the center of the glass to the edge. And that's indicative of something that is younger. As wines get older, they tend to get more opaque as they spread from center to edge. And as they get older still, they get more burnished, more golden.
That's true of red wines as well. Red wines tend to brown as they get older. Hey, Bill. Yeah. A question from Gabby. Does the glass size matter? Oh, that's an excellent question. I meant to address that. So size does matter for the sake of the wine glass. I have about a three to four ounce glass. Ideally, for the sake of a wine glass, you want something that can hold about a four to five ounce pour and remain only a third full. And that's so that you can manipulate the wine in the glass. Because so many of the things that dictate our experience of wine, especially when it comes to smell, they're very volatile chemical constituents. And manipulating the wine like this throws those off and makes them more available to our nose once we stick our nose in the glass.
It also aerates the wine. So these wines are a bit like genies in bottles. And they need air to come into their own and to fully express. And manipulating a wine like this, swirling in the glass, is not only a fun parlor trick, but serves an important purpose for the sake of the wine. So, don't worry if you only have tumblers to taste out of at home; just find a bigger tumbler if you're tasting out of little shot glasses. I really despise the notion that you should have a glass for every wine. I drink out of these at home. They're not the cleanest glassware in the moment, but they're very useful in terms of shape and size. And they're elegant. You only really need one good glass for your wines.
Best to invest in one good glass, as opposed to worrying about having a singular glass for each wine. In answer to Rachel's question about wine, we talked about stemless glassware. It doesn't matter. This convention of having a stem on the glass evolved to keep the wine at temp and away from your hands, and also to keep the bulb itself free of fingerprints. It doesn't matter if the glass is stemless in the least. But in looking at the wine again, we get a sense of age. We get a sense of the kind of grape. Obviously, this is a white wine. And then lastly, we get a sense of alcohol in this wine. So, you can see the wine. So, the wine plays in the glass.
And you can see the wine descend in the glass after you've swirled it. And this wine is sheething. I don't know if you can get a sense of that at all. That's like the least rewarding camera angle ever. But if this was a more viscous wine, you'd see more legs. This is doing what's called sheething. And so that gives us a sense that this is a lower alcohol line for the sake of this particular bottle. I should have done this math before. 12 and 1/2 percent, which is right where you want Chablis and right where Chablis typically lies. And that's a lower ABV wine. And because that is sheathing, you're not getting tears. People say nice legs for a wine. That is not an indication of its quality.
That's an indication of higher alcohol or extra sugar left over at the tail end of fermentation. Another question, Bill. What would be the ideal temperature at which to serve or drink it? Fine question, Marty. And bless you, Marty, for asking that question. And then sheathing. Sheeting refers to the fact that the wine is descending in mass and there are no individual tears on the glass. So it's kind of lowering the glass as a sheet would or as a curtain would drop in mass. There is an ideal temp, Marty. Typically, home fridges are much cooler than you might like. I typically, in an ideal world, out of a home fridge would take a white bottle of wine out 30 minutes before I intended to enjoy it.
Chablis, because it's a more kind of bright linear kind of wine, you would want to drink at a slightly lower temp, maybe upper 40s, 50ish, depending on where you were. I kind of like to leave a wine out and get a sense of how it evolves as it comes up in temp. Honestly, Marty, I'm kind of sloppy when it comes to temps of wine. I really genuinely enjoy the dynamic of letting a wine come up a bit and seeing how it evolves over time. So ideally, it would come out of the fridge, especially a home fridge, at least 30 minutes to an hour before you intended to drink it. The old truism is that most people serve their white wines too cold and their red wines too warm.
And I think at home in particular, that does tend to be the case. So now moving on to the nos of this particular offering, which is much more rewarding than just the sight of it. And again, if you're getting impatient, drink away. Now, really make a meal of this. You're going to want to swirl, but really dig in deep. Put your nose into the glass of wine and inhale deeply. Now, the sense of smell is hugely fascinating. There's actually relatively recent scientific work into the mechanism of smell. And the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2004 was actually given to a couple of Columbia researchers for really their pioneering work into further unlocking what enables us to smell. And ultimately, you have millions of olfactory receptors, and they're buried in the upper recesses of your nasal cavities.
And they latch onto thousands of different kinds of individual smells. So individual chemical signifiers they'll latch onto. And through the combination of those thousands of different inputs, locking onto these millions of different receptors, you get a fuller picture of a particular wine. Now, not unlike, you know, looking at, you know, the sun, those receptors, you know, they can get fatigued. So very often when people are smelling a wine, you know, they'll want to reset. They'll want to come back to, you know, their shirt, you know, and smell that to reset. Or, you know, you can have a drink of water or a piece of bread or what have you, but that can be helpful. You really want to spend time with the glass and smelling a wine.
It's something that people often rush past for the sake of tasting. And I understand that, you know, tasting is much more enjoyable. But, you know, as you spend more time with these wines, I think, you know, the smell itself becomes, you know, really, you know, ennobling and, you know, kind of fascinating and book-ending in and of itself. So for the sake of the Chablis, you know, it's not a wine that, you know, is hugely effusive or floral. You know, it's not a wine that, you know, kind of gives it up on the first date. You know, it's not exuberant. It's not exploding out of the glass at you. You know, it's something a little more reticent, a little more coy. It's something that you have to, you know, linger over.
Feel free, commenters, if you are drinking the Chablis, to throw out any tasting notes you get, be it on the nose or the palate, as we move on. It is the case that people, very often, will smell better out of one nostril than another. I find myself smelling out of my right nostril as opposed to my left. That's just force of habit, honestly. And part of that's just because I'm right-handed. But, you know, some people, you know, will be highly attuned to that. You know, some people, you know, will switch. Some people say that, you know, they taste better, they smell better at certain times of the day. For, you know, tasting notes here, we have Chablis, good, wet.
We have, you know, mineral, chalky, metallic, apple skin, seashells from Zoe Nystrom, which is, those are all really classic signifiers for the sake of Chablis. But, you know, these are more subtle, you know, descriptors. You know, we're not talking, you know, about, you know, flower beds or, you know, you know, spice bazaars or anything along those lines, you know. Chablis is something that, you know, kind of unravels and folds slowly over time. Flint is another great one, Shannon. The French have an expression for the flinty smell of Chablis, a hugely classic characteristic. So, having fully smelled this particular offering, let's move on to taste. You'll have to forgive me. I tend to aerate a wine after smelling it. That is something that you can do at home. My mom finds it hugely obnoxious.
Big ups if you're listening, Mom. You know, it does help make the wine a bit more expressive, or I find it does. I also do it out of force of habit and to, you know, piss off my mom at this point. But it is a useful, you know, device if you've mastered it. Bill, another question. What kind of aromas are best detected at colder versus higher temperature? That's actually, you know, it depends. A really great question. There are very few aromas that are detected better at lower temps. Almost all aromas are detected at higher temps, which is why it's, you know, really important for the sake of a white wine to be serving it at, you know, not an ice-cold temp. And then, can you elaborate on what you mean by aerate?
Yeah. So, you can watch me if you're home. So, I'm aerating glass. But if you can listen along at home here. You know, just drawing air over your tongue, in your mouth. I have a good friend in the Finger Lakes that he, like, does his glycerine, like, swish for a wine and keeps it in his mouth for a longer time. That actually can be, like, a really useful technique. Thank you to the commenter who said that's disgusting. It is disgusting. Christian, thank you. It is a little disturbing in and of its own right. But it's become second nature at this point. And I can't help myself. At any rate, you know, it does make the wine, you know, more expressive. And honestly, it sounds kind of gross.
But, you know, leaving it in your mouth for a longer period of time does give you more access to, you know, the fuller breadth of flavors that are in the mix. So, Joan, if you can continue to bring, you know, these questions to my attention. I'm going to talk over Chablis, this bottle in particular. And bear with me. You'll just learn something for the sake of our guests that aren't working with Chablis. But I think this is a worthwhile paradigm. Now, Chablis is, you know, one of my favorite wine regions in the world. It's a great wine. It ostensibly is part of Burgundy. But it is well north of Burgundy. You can see it right there, the circled bit there. It is at just above the 47th parallel.
So it is in a marginal climate in winemaking terms. Historically, people talked about the grapevine, this vinifera, thriving between 30 and 50 degrees north latitude. So you're approaching that 50-degree mark at which, you know, it's impossible to safely ripen grapes. Now, it should be said that is all changing rapidly as the world warms. And significant for the sake of Chablis, I recommend it, because 2018 was a very warm vintage. And this particular take on Chablis from Jean-Paul and Benoit Duran, actually really approachable. You know, very often people talk about Chablis as a younger wine, you know, being kind of austere and so acid-driven that it's not pleasant. That's not the case with this particular bottle. It's gorgeous. It's showing really well. This is really kind of like simple winemaking.
You're dealing with 30 scattered plots. They're all planted on this famous form of limestone. It's called Kimmerigene soil. It's named after a geological era in the Jurassic era. And Chablis is in the middle of this massive geological area called the Harris Basin. And it's very interesting. It's very poetic that Chablis goes as well as it does with oysters, because you're dealing essentially with ancient ocean beds. Kimmerigene soil is essentially a type of mudstone, compressed mud, if you will, that's chock-full of limestone and ancient marine fossils. So people talk about this wine that famously goes with oysters. And if you walk the vineyards, you see fossilized oysters. Limestone soil is calcareous soil. People say calcareous because they contain quite a bit of calcium. They have higher pHs, and they tend to produce wines that are lower in pH.
So they tend to produce wines that are more acid-driven. And that is very much the case with Chablis. So you have a northern climate, and then you have the subset of soils that tend to produce these more mineral-driven wines. So you have something that's linear and sharp and precise. Bill, a few questions when you get a chance. Yes. Fire away, Jim. So first, what's a classic food pairing with Chablis? Classic tug pairing with Chablis? That's an excellent question. I can't remember the last time I paired Chablis with something. I mean, Chablis just goes with everything. This is a really bad answer, a total cop-out. But Chablis just works beautifully with a lot of different types of dishes. I don't know if John can bail me out and can think of something that would go with Chablis.
There you go, seaweed sourdough. Thank you. Thank you, MJ. Seaweed sourdough, yeah, one of the raviolis. Julia, thank you. Getting bailed out by the commenters here. I'm just outside of my normal element on the pairing front, but those are all great recommendations. And the next question, what role did Charlemagne's wife play in popularizing Chardonnay? That's an excellent question. So famously, Charlemagne, the King of the Franks, planted vines in the heart of Burgundy proper. He is credited for popularizing Chardonnay because one of the most famous Chardonnays in Burgundy bears his name. It's called Courton Chardonnay, this hillside with a forest at the top. So it kind of looks like an old kid-and-play style, you know, high top on this, you know, beatific hill in the heart of the Côte de Nuits in Burgundy.
Charlemagne actually wasn't much of a drinker historically, which I find hugely fascinating. But Charlemagne presided over, you know, Burgundy at a very important time in the high Middle Ages. And he created enough political stability and also gave enough money to the religious orders that ultimately developed viticulture there. And they would have been making Pinot Noir to the extent that they were working with white grapes. They were probably working with what's called Fromontou or Pinot Blanc. Or Pinot Gris in another form. But, you know, you're talking, you know, the beginning of this golden era of, you know, monks making wine in the heart of Burgundy. So I think we have a fuller sense of that particular wine. Again, you know, Dr. Ryan, you're dealing with 13th generation of winemakers in Benoist, you know, making wines.
A few more questions. Yes. Is Chablis meant to be enjoyed young? This is an excellent question. So typically, Chablis is a wine that people would lay down for a long time. And, you know, there's certain historic, you know, stylistic preferences that come into play there. Historically, people threw a lot of sulfur at Chablis. So in the bottle, it was almost green. And you had to give it decades at a time, especially for, you know, the proudest, you know, Premier Cruze and Grand Cruze. And in Chablis, they have a village level wine, which is the one that I recommended, which is the one that we tasted right here. And then you have two additional tiers, the Premier Cruze and Grand Cruze. And, you know, somewhat counterintuitively, you know, those more prestigious wines take longer to come into their own.
So Chablis is incredibly age-worthy. And people talk about Chablis, you know, not being worth drinking in its youth, that it was something that you had to lay down if you wanted to, you know, properly enjoy it. Few people drink that way anymore. You know, most people are looking to drink a wine in the current vintage. And it just so happens that as the world warms, the 2018s of the world are much more accessible than Chablis in a current vintage was generations prior to this. All right. And I had another question. There is someone that's drinking a white Burgundy. Does that count as a Chablis, a Chardonnay? That is an excellent, excellent question. So Chablis. Chablis is considered a part of the larger region of Burgundy.
It should be said, though, that Chablis is kind of its own thing. It kind of went its own way. And typically when people say white Burgundy, they're not talking about Chablis. They're talking about what's called the Côte d'Or or the Coche-Alenay or the Macanay. So they're talking about the historical heart of Burgundy as opposed to Chablis, which is this northern outlier. And usually if you want to talk about Chablis, you don't talk about Burgundy proper. You just talk about Chablis in isolation. And there's kind of like a red foil for that. So similarly to the south of the historic heart of Burgundy, you have Beaujolais, which is dedicated to this grape called Gamay. And Beaujolais is considered part of Burgundy proper, but it's really its own thing.
And you wouldn't say red Burgundy and talk about Beaujolais. You would just say Beaujolais. So if they're drinking white Burgundy, it's likely they're drinking one of those wines from the historic heart of Burgundy proper and not Chablis. And because of that, they're drinking something that is from a region that's further south and is likely fuller in body than the Chablis. And depending on the producer, depending on the village, the particular vineyard, it's something that could see some oak as well, which is a lovely segue into our second wine, which does see some oak as well. And then last question I had, how do you evaluate the acid level of a wine? That's an excellent question. And we're going to kind of circle back to that for the sake of the building blocks of wine after we talk about our second offering.
But, you know, acid is the lifeblood of wine. It is what makes it salivate. It's what gives a wine length. I tend to think in terms of, you know, a three-act play of tasting. You have the initial third. That's the attack. That's your first impression of a wine. And then you have the act two, which is this mid-palate, which is, you know, the wine as it evolves, the wine as you become, you know, conscious of it, as you manipulate it on your palate. And then you have the third act, which is the finish. Acid is what gives wine that third act. And it's what makes you want to eat along with the wine. And then there's this squeegee brush that, you know, kind of cleanses everything and prepares you for another sip.
Or another bite of food. So acid is essential. In terms of evaluating it in wine, you know, I think in terms of, you know, stringency, in terms of, you know, pucker on a wine, acid can register, you know, much like alcohol does on a wine. And that's something that we'll cover, you know, in the third act of this particular kind of wine school that we're working on now. So I'm going to shift gears and we're going to move on to our second Chardonnay. For my sake, this is a Sonoma County Chard. It is from the Chalk Hill AVA. For those of you playing along at home, AVA stands for American Viticultural Area, and it's a geographical designation, similar to Chablis, also a geographical designation in the Old World.
But the French are much more comfortable with their wine bureaucracy. So for the sake of Chablis, to be considered Chablis, there are all sorts of government strictures that you buy into. And they have everything to do with how the wine is made and how the wine ultimately tastes, down to a tasting panel of your fellow vignerons and wine bureaucrats that will certify a wine as belonging to the species of Chablis. State-side, we are much less comfortable with that, you know, notion of government intervention in something like wine. So to say AVA is just a geographical designation. Now, Chalk Hill is circled here. We're in the heart of Sonoma. If Chablis is at the 47th plus parallel, we're at the 38th plus parallel here. So we are well further south.
It is on average about 10 degrees hotter in Sonoma on a given summer day than it is in Chablis. And that means the grapes get much riper. They develop a lot more sugar. Which means more sugar. More potential alcohol. Which means a bigger, bolder, fatter, if you will, kind of wine. As grapes ripen, they tend to convert sugar, or they tend to convert acid, it should be said, into sugar. So some of that acid that the Chablis had is, for the sake of the Sonoma County offering, going to be converted into sugar. And then there's another variable, and that being oak. So this is a wine, it is not aged in stainless. It is aged in oak. And it spends 11 months in barrel. And over a third of that oak is new.
Now, when we talk about oak, there are almost as many variables that determine how a barrel impacts and affects the flavor of a wine, as they are for the wine in the vineyard itself. The fact that they're using new oak, the fact that this oak hasn't held wine before, means that those oakier flavors, those lactones, those vanillins, those things that conjure those kinds of bacon spice, creamy or buttery, you know, kinds of chemical constituents and flavors and aromas, etc. You know, those are all going to be leached into the wine much more readily with new oak than they are with used. So I'm not going to belabor the point on this particular wine. Evaluate it for yourself. Sight, smell, and taste. You can see my sight. It's much darker than the first offering.
That is because it comes from a warmer climate. And the grapes need to develop more sugar before they are harvested. And then the additional element of oak will affect the color as well. So you're moving into a much more kind of golden hue than we saw with the Chablis, which is much more straw color. On the nose, this one, much more expressive. Much more expressive than the previous offering. This is a wine that, you know, really, you know, flies out of the glass at you. Much more than the previous Chablis did. Keep it coming with both, you know, tasting notes. We have a still sheeting note here. Yeah, not going to be many tears on this as well. Maybe a few more than the previous offering. This is demonstrably higher in alcohol than the Chablis.
You're at 14%, which is a not insignificant amount of alcohol. We have Wow talk about a butterscotch bomb from Lizzie and James. These are both 2018s for the sake of Will's comment, which is useful for the sake of this comparison because, you know, they're at the same moment on the aging curve. So, you know, this is kind of a pure comparison. You know, to the extent that you can keep as many variables as possible fixed, you know, this comparison becomes much better. More meaningful. Hey, Bill. It's now an okay time for some questions. I've got a few cataloged that I wanted to keep you going. File away, Joan. Great. Does Chablis ever get oaked? That's an excellent question. Historically, people, you know, went out of their way not to throw any oak with a demonstrable flavor at Chablis.
So, you can use neutral oak in making a wine. And that is an oak vessel. That is good. It's been used a sufficient number of times that it's not imparting any flavor. It is just a blank canvas of sorts, an empty vessel to contain the wine. Historically, that's how Chablis would have been aged. In large neutral oak, that's that imparted no flavor. Now, as Chablis gets warmer, you see more and more people treating it like wines to the south. So, particularly with the more favored sites where there's better ripening of grapes in Chablis, the Premier Cruze, the Grand Cruze, you are seeing people throw new oak at Chablis. So, you know, oak in and of itself, you know, people talk about not liking oaky Chardonnay or what have you.
You know, oak is like any other variable in winemaking or life. You know, you can use it to, you know, benevolent ends and to evil ones as well. Oak in and of itself is not a bad thing. You know, oak can be used to great effect in making wine. And some grapes wear it better than others. Chardonnay is a grape that I think, you know, when it's deployed to benevolent ends, it's not a bad thing. It wears oak really beautifully. And, you know, this particular wine in the Chalk Hill might not be to your, you know, liking stylistically. But there's nothing out of whack about this wine. You know, it carries off well. It's elegant. You know, it is balanced. It's much more bombastic than the Chablis. But it should be.
It's from California. You know, that's kind of like, you know, part of what it is. Can you say more about the – this is from your dad. Can you say more about the finish of the Chablis? The third act? Thank you, Pops. So the third act on the Chablis for me is, you know, circling around, you know, just coming back to those ancient oyster beds. For me, you know, it's just like all seashells, all purity. There's something, you know, life-affirming about, you know, good Chablis just because it's so cleansing. You know, it's like hugely saline and all this like wet, you know, wet water kind of over, you know, hard rock, mountain stream minerality. You know, kind of chalkiness that you get out of Chablis on the back end that, you know, I really enjoy.
Why do certain white wines have a mild effervescence? That's a stylistic preference. So some of that is perceptual. So, you know, some of that has to do with the way that the wine is made and perception of acid that registers for us physiologically like effervescence. So, you know, there's another variable for the sake of these two wines that is about – this is getting a little more technical, but malolactic fermentation. So you have the initial phase of the fermentation process whereby you get a conversion of sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide. But there's a second process that happens in a lot of wines that converts malic acid into lactic acid and other chemical constituents. So malic acid is like the green apple acid. That's the best analog.
And in German, they call it apple acid. Lactic acid is like the yogurty acid. And it's much creamier. Malolactic fermentation also produces these chemical constituents called diacetyl. And they give you a perception of this, like, buttery flavor as well. So with these two wines, the Chablis typically would not go through malolactic fermentation or mallow, as the cool kids say. Whereas the Sonoma Chard went through full mallow. And you get a sense of that in terms of the richness of it. Now, wines that don't go through malolactic fermentation, they give you a little bit more of that effervescence on the palate. And then lastly, some producers will bottle with just like a pin prick of CO2. And they do that because it helps the wine age. It gives us a perception of freshness.
It makes it a little more durable. So, you know, sometimes there is a little bit of effervescence. And, you know, very often that's an intentional choice as opposed to a winemaking flaw. Can you briefly touch on Petit Chablis? That's an excellent question. So Chablis, the historic heart of the region, as defined by the French, was really first enumerated. The French Appalachian system came into being between World War I and World War II in the 30s. And so you had all of these historically well-known regions that were finally codified by the French under law into these international brands. Now, as, you know, these things develop, people tend to abuse those brands. And that's what's happened for the sake of Chablis.
Chablis, the original, you know, kind of historic heart of the region, has been gradually expanded, much to the chagrin of the more quality-conscious growers there. Petit Chablis is a further expansion. So if you think of these like Russian nesting dolls, Petit Chablis is a doll. It's a doll outside of the historic heart of Chablis. The soil types tend to be different. So I talked about that Cammergine soil for the sake of the greatest Chablis. In Petit Chablis, you're dealing with a different type of limestone called Portlandian. It tends to be harder. And you tend to be on vineyard sites that tend to be less favorable for ripening. So you get wines that are a little more shrill and a little, you know, typically, you know, more quotidian, you know, not as highly ripened.
So Chablis is another designation, another geographic designation for the wines of the larger region. Would you like more questions or would you like to go on? How many do we have? There are quite a few actually still. Yeah, let's take a few more if we're not boring everyone to tears. And then we'll circle back around for some final conclusions. Okay, cool. On, you know, this tasting exercise. What are wine growers doing to counteract warmer temperatures? Are they changing their grape varietals? That is a question for another class. That is a question for, you know, life in a vineyard and, you know, something that wine makers are deeply worried about. So I think, you know, a really profound way to look at this and consider it is by looking at, you know, some major vintages in France.
So 2000. There are a lot of grape growers in Burgundy in particular who will talk about winemaking in Burgundy in France before and after 2003. So 2003 in France, if you remember back, was this historically warm vintage. It was so warm that a lot of people who, you know, traditionally didn't have air conditioning in France, you know, a lot of French parishioners, like pensioners and stuff, you know, sadly they were dying of heat stroke. Because it was warmer than it had been in five years. And so people talk about 2003 as the warmest vintage in France since the 16th century. Flash forward to 2018, and pretty much every succeeding vintage has been almost as warm if not warmer. 2018 was as warm as 2003. It was warm in a different way.
So people talk about vintages, and there's so many different variables that go into making a vintage what it is. But, you know, the fact is that these historic norms that people abide by that dictate what they plant and how they make their wine are changing. And there are some things that you can do in the vineyard, in the cellar, to, you know, continue to work with grapes in the way that you've worked with them historically. And then there are some other things that, you know, you know, the other conditions in the vineyard in particular that make it impossible to make the wine that you once made. So that is something that people are just continually making. And that's something to grapple with. And there's no single answer to that question.
That is something that, you know, will continue to evolve as the world continues to warm as it will. Can you recommend some American Chardonnays that don't taste like oak? Yeah. So, I mean, again, you know, Chardonnay in and of itself is not a dirty word. And there's a Chardonnay for everybody just because it's such a versatile varietal. Stony Hill is a producer in Napa that classically made these, like, crisp, linear Chablis. La Torre in Sonoma. There's a lot of really amazing Chardonnay coming out of, for my, you know, personal taste, the Willamette Valley. And you're at a much higher latitude in the Willamette. And, you know, the wines are much more Burgundian and much more crisp and clean and chalky than the Chardonnay of typical Napa.
You know, kind of, you know, the Chardonnay that people think of when they think of American Chardonnay. And, you know, any, you know, a lot of the great Pinot producers that you find in the Willamette are also producing Chardonnays that are stunningly good. Okay. Let's do this last question and I'll let you continue. And then we'll do more questions at the end. Can you discuss Crown's Gap versus Durrell Vineyard in Sonoma? That's over my head. I do. I cannot. I apologize. I'll do some digging. Later. That's a deep dive into Sonoma, you know, kind of vineyard specificity. And I am admittedly an old world snob. So I know less about the individual vineyards of Sonoma than I might like. But I'll do a deeper dive for that particular query.
And we can circle back to that when I, you know, give an update on Monday. Okay. Great. So we are going to taste these two wines side by side now. So hopefully you guys have two glasses and kind of move back and forth for the sake of this exercise. And, you know, lastly, just think in terms of the building blocks of wine. So we've thrown a lot of different adjectives at these particular offerings. But I think, you know, it's important to, you know, consider those tasting notes as, you know, kind of flesh. On the wine body. Ultimately, the structure, these four attributes are the bone structure. And these four, you know, dimensions of structure of taste are the things that are, you know, kind of a little less subjective.
And that don't change. And as I taste wine more, they're the things I, you know, think in terms of more. And I think they're especially valuable for the sake of pairing food with wine. Because you tend to think in terms of the structure of the wine itself when you're pairing with food more than you do the individual, you know, kind of adjectives. So I want you guys to taste back and forth between the two wines that you have. So I have a Chablis and a California Chardonnay. Whatever you have at home, taste back and forth one and then the other. And consider it on each of these, you know, for the sake of each of these individual, you know, kind of criteria. So we're going to start here with sweetness.
And both of these are dry wines. When I say dry, you know, that's kind of counterintuitive. It's, you know, fundamentally preposterous to talk about a liquid being dry. But at the end of the day, when we say dry about wine, what we mean is that there is no extra flavor. There is no extra sugar unfermented left in the glass. So we don't perceive any what's called residual sweetness in the wine. And that's what we mean by dry. These are both dry wines. It should be said that some dry wines taste drier than others. So the Chardonnay that I have that sees a good deal of new oak from Sonoma County will have this, like, creamy, rich, buttery dimension to it that almost registers as sweet. And that is very important.
It's very helpful for the sake of some dishes that are similarly creamy and buttery. People freak out about sweetness in wine. But it's such a useful thing, especially when it comes to pairing. There are a lot of dishes that work with a wine that has a little bit of sweetness to it that wouldn't work the same way with something that was bone dry. So I'm going to taste my Chablis and my Sonoma Chard and think about, you know, how these vary one to the next for the sake of dry wines. Joan, maybe you can feed me with another question. Yeah, sure. What are other well-known Chardonnay regions of the world? That's a great question. So Burgundy, historic heart of Chardonnay. The name of the grape itself comes from a village in Burgundy.
Obviously, California, Sonoma, the Central Coast, Napa have become famous for Chard. Chard grows everywhere. So I find it harder to think of a region that doesn't make Chard than one that does. I'm trying to think of other Chardonnays that I really enjoy elsewhere. Well, so this was another question. Everybody wants to know, what is your favorite Virginia or DMV area Chardonnay? That's a really great question. So I like what Jim Law does at Linden. Jim Law is an adorable gentleman that makes wine about an hour and a change west of here in Linden, Virginia. His Chard can get a little, like, too, like, austere at times. Sometimes I wish it sounded kind of counter-turdy, but, you know, I wish it got, you know, fuller and richer and rounder.
I really like what the guys at Early Mountain do for the sake of their Chard. You know, they have, you know, stylistically the opposite thing going on for me sometimes. Even sometimes I feel like their Chardonnays a little richer than I want it to be, but they're uniformly well-made wines. I think Michael Schaps makes some lovely Chardons. He trained in Burgundy. And I think he uses oak in his wines. But he does so in a, like, old-world, you know, very judicious kind of elegant manner. And then, you know, I think the guys at Old Westminster have worked for Chardonnay to good effect. Who am I forgetting? I'm forgetting a million. I'll have to circle back to that one, honestly, because, you know, there are a lot of people making great wine locally.
Oh, Doden, thank you, Sarah Thompson. I'm deeply sorry, Regina, if you're here, if you're following along. Maryland, you know, to the extent that anyone thinks about local wine, you know, they think about wine from Virginia. Maryland makes some amazing wine. First and foremost, our dear friends in Anne Arundel County at Doden make some absolutely fabulous Chardonnays as well. Any other questions for timing? So I chased it through. For the sake of sweetness, they're both drier. But again, I, you know, wanted to double down on that point, you know, for the sake of the Sonoma Chard. It almost has this perceptual sweetness about it because of that oak. Moving on to acid, you know, the Chablis, much more linear, much more acid-driven than the Sonoma Chard I'm working with.
And that's because of where it comes from. That's because of how it was made, because it didn't go through full mallow. We saw someone drinking the Vinnia Chard in the audience, Brian Miller. That's a wine that actually doesn't see any oak and drinks more like Chablis than you'd ever expect a local wine to. And Brian, for your sake, tasting against, I think you have a Gérard Chard at your home office. That, you know, somewhat, you know, bizarrely is probably a little richer and lusher. But, you know, when you're tasting these wines and thinking about how the acidity relates, think about why that is. You know, what conditions ultimately, you know, created, you know, that perception of acidity in these wines. Can you recommend a classic cheese pairing with the Chardonnay? Ooh.
That's a great question. And I will circle back to that, Joan, I promise. But to speak to someone that asked earlier about, you know, registering acid for the sake of these wines. And for me, you know, it's all about, you know, my kind of physiological response to the wine. You know, how much does it make you salivate? You know, how much does it give you that pucker on the palate? You know. And, you know, that's, you know, really. The essential. And, you know, I think is the best way to register the acidity in these wines. For the sake of pairings, you know, there's this old, if it grows together, it goes together, you know, kind of thing. So there are a lot of clumps out of Burgundy. That would be classic pairings for Chablis.
I like Chablis with kind of like a sharper, you know, cheese. So like a lot of goat cheeses. I think it's really lovely with. There's like a really classic like Chevre Sancerre pairing. But I think in its own way, you know, Chèvre and Chablis is equally delicious. For the sake of a buttery Chard, I would want something, you know, a little more impolite. You know, something with like a stinky like triple cream, you know, over the top. You know, you open the fridge, you can smell the cheese, kind of cheese, you know. And, you know, that's just because, you know, it's a wine that's giving you more. You know, it's a wine that is, you know, you know, almost, you know, over the top. Overripe and opulent.
And you want cheese that, you know, you know, registers the same way. So cowgirl triple cream. Yeah, bananas. That'd be a great pairing with the Sonoma Chard. Moving on. We've got tannin. So tannins are these long chain, you know, kind of polyphenols. And they're organic compounds. They register as a stringency on a wine. They come from the stems, seeds, and skins are great. But they also come from oak. And they register differently than acid or alcohol. Obviously, we have a wine here that doesn't see any contact with the stems, seeds, and skins in the Chablis. Therefore, you know, it's not a wine that exhibits any kind of tannins. But for the sake of the Sonoma Chard that I have, it is something that has a bit of a tannic quality to it.
It's not going to be tannic in the same way that a red wine would be. But, you know, it will, you know, change. It will give you a perception of, you know, kind of mildest stringency and fullness and breadth in a way that a wine that didn't see oak wouldn't. And then, lastly, alcohol. So for the sake of alcohol in the wine, I think in terms of, you know, where it, you know, ultimately, you know, falls in the palate, where it lands. So, you know, think about, you know, doing a shot. You know, that shot of liquor, you know, burrows its way, you know, down through your throat, down to your stomach. For the sake of wine, the play is much, you know, less dramatic.
You know, you're talking about whether a wine registers, you know, kind of toward the front of your mouth, toward the middle, or toward the back. And for the sake of the Chablis, you know, it's more toward the front. You know, for the sake of the Sonoma Chard, it's going to be further to the back. And all of these things together ultimately give you a perception of body. So for the sake of this exercise, I talked about four main, or talking about originally five main characteristics. But for me, it's the four, and then body is the sum total of the four characteristics. So you kind of add all these up, and they give you a fuller perception of the weight of the whole. And, you know, there's no kind of like scientific answer when it comes to body.
Obviously, something that's higher in alcohol, you will perceive as a fuller-bodied wine. But something that's sweeter, you will perceive as a fuller-bodied wine, even if it's only, you know, tipping the scales at like 8% alcohol. Something that's more tannic, you will perceive. Something that's more acid-driven, you will perceive as a lower-bodied. So all of these variables are in dialogue, one with the other. And they contribute to this kind of, you know, broader sense of what goes into the wine. So Joan, I'm going to take some questions offline. We're nearing an hour, and I thank you all for staying in the loop, if you have so far. I have one pearl, one final pearl of wisdom, and then a toast to drink with all of you before we move into final questions.
Just a reminder. I will distribute, you know, some additional notes pursuant to the chat, pursuant to questions I didn't get to or couldn't answer for the sake of the specificity of Sonoma Vineyards. And that email will come tomorrow. At any rate, I wanted to close with this quote from a great English merchant, George Saintsbury. He said, The hardest thing to attain is the appreciation of difference without insisting on security. That is true in wine as it is in life. And, you know, the hope for the sake of this class is that you've got a fuller sense of how to taste more analytically and how to consider, you know, sight, smell, and taste when it comes to wine.
And that you are able to connect ultimately what's in the glass with how a wine was made, where it came from, maybe how it was manipulated in the cellar. And then secondarily, maybe you developed a fuller appreciation. For a much reviled grape in this Chardonnay that we've all been drinking. So I'll close with a bit of a toast and a few more announcements before we get into questions toward the end. I just wanted to mention that we are still lastly accepting donations to our Employee Relief Fund. We are incredibly grateful for the support of our community throughout this crisis. We know that we are not the only ones suffering, and we know that we are hugely lucky to be sitting here on a beautiful Sunday afternoon drinking wine one with the other.
You know, if you want to, you know, pay for this experience at all, we are seeking donations online if you're so inclined. It is totally optional. Lastly, I wanted to reflect on the preposterousness of this moment. I make my life pulling quirks in person. You know, I earn a living interacting with guests. I never imagined myself sitting in front of a computer screen and doing this all virtually. Much as I don't think any of us imagined being in this kind of moment together, you know, a month ago, you know, let alone a week ago. But I think it's important to remember that each in our own way, by doing this, by staying home, we are contributing to the greater good. By contributing to our own isolation, we are protecting the most vulnerable among us. And I want to remember that, and I want to take heart from it, and I want to thank you all for participating in that today. So raise a glass to you all to being alone together. Cheers.
All right, John, bring in questions. This was one that came in early on. Can you give some more advice about chilling red wine since you mentioned that most red wine is drunk too warm? Should it be chilled? Yeah, yeah. So I would say that the 30-minute rule works on both sides. So I mentioned earlier that, you know, if you're drinking white, then you can pull it from the fridge 30 minutes before you intend on opening it and drinking it. And that will allow the wine to come up in temp. Conversely, if you're drinking a red 30 minutes ahead of time, throw it in the fridge. And that will bring it down to something closer to the cellar temp. And, you know, ask about, you know, these different dimensions of taste that become accessible to you and different dimensions of smell.
In particular, you know, with red wine, bringing the wine down in temp, it actually tends to make the perception of alcohol a little more agreeable. And when that's dampened, you know, I find you get a fuller sense of what else is going on with the wine. I think you really answered most of them, to be honest. I had a few private ones about what you're wearing, et cetera. But, I am proudly sporting a new Columbia shirt. Yes, I debated what to wear in the interest of full disclosure. My wife, Meredith, voted strongly against shirt and tie for this exercise. And my mom voted strongly against the oh-so-revealing Revelers Hour T-shirt. So, I decided that black was my black T-shirt was my my new uniform for the sake of this exercise.
But out of solidarity with all the people stuck at home, I didn't shave. And I'm not too proud to admit this is like going on two weeks' worth of beard growth here. So, you know, think about that at home. Yeah. OK, great. I think the consensus was next class. If you could do a Riesling class. That was what I saw most. They're wow. They're they're preaching in the choir. That's amazing. Yeah, I would I would love to do that. And, you know, fortunately, it's getting warmer. And recently, you know, is just the thing to drink as the weather warms. I make no promises on the later hose in front. Oh, yeah. Oh, Jay. I'll see what I can do. We'll try to get the recording to everybody as well as the chat transcript. That seems to be a hot commodity. Wow. Wow. That's amazing. And once again, thank you all so much for joining. I'm really humbled at the response to this. And it is definitely something that, you know, we will continue to do for however long we're, you know, isolating together. All right. All right. We're going down the studio, guys.
