Wine · Medium strength
Oaked Chardonnay
Butter, vanilla, and orchard fruit — the armchair of white wines.
How to order it: California classic. Pairs with roast chicken and strong opinions.
Flavor profile
The proper serve
- Chill to 50–55°F — not ice cold
- Wider white-wine glass
- Let it warm slightly in the glass
- Pairs: roast chicken, butter, cream
- Decanting optional but interesting
The story
Chardonnay's home is Burgundy, where it produces the most coveted white wines on earth — Montrachet, Meursault, Chablis — and where oak was always a seasoning, never a sauce. California took a different view. At the 1976 Judgment of Paris tasting, a Napa Chardonnay from Chateau Montelena beat the French at their own blind game, and an industry sprinted toward riper fruit and showier barrels. The butter-bomb era followed, then the inevitable backlash — an entire generation ordering 'anything but Chardonnay.' The pendulum has since settled somewhere civilized: judicious oak, real acidity, actual place. The grape itself was never the problem. It simply does whatever its makers ask, which is both its gift and its liability.
Adjacent pours