The search for the soul of Chardonnay has been labyrinthine. There have been so many wrong turns. So many dead ends. So many retreats and reorientations. (Remember the 180-degree swing from heavily toasted oak to “inox” steel tanks?)
Theseus emerged alive from the labyrinth of Daedalus by holding tight to a piece of thread. Similarly, those on the cutting edge of Chardonnay production today are looking fearlessly forward while holding tight to the traditions of the past.
And those traditions include a bit of black magic: juice that comes pouring from the press as dark as pitch but is a shimmering green-tinted gold by the time it’s bottled. Some call this mysterious liquid Black Chardonnay.
If you’re having a moment of déjà vu, you may be remembering George M. Taber’s book “Judgment of Paris.” According to Taber’s account, the winemaker Jim Barrett found to his horror one day that his yet-to-be-released 1973 Chateau Montelena Chardonnay had turned a distinct copper color. Barrett concluded that it must have been severely oxidized, since it had the look of a wine with a century of cellar age. Later, to his surprise, the Chard returned to its proper golden hue. Taber describes the phenomenon as Bottle Shock, and the term was used as the title for the film adaptation of his book.
The way Taber tells it, the discoloration happened after bottling. But the author goes on to describe a mid-1970s winemaking milieu in which oxygen generally began to be seen as the enemy. University of California, Davis, professors believed that “excessive contact with air” would cause white wine to “lose its fruity flavors and turn brown,” Taber writes. “The researchers suggested engulfing the grapes and young wine in nitrogen in order to keep air away.”
Today’s prevailing wisdom thus calls for a “gentle press,” or a slow squeeze, of whole clusters of Chardonnay in the airless environment of a pneumatic press that has been pumped full of nitrogen and sulfur dioxide.
But to make Black Chard, you’ve got to be brave enough to turn the prevailing protocol inside out. It feels almost like an act of violence. Rather than pressing gently, you smash the fruit vigorously. Instead of denying the must oxygen, you aerate it generously. In whodunit terms, it’s murder by bludgeoning rather than slow asphyxiation.
But the Black Chard method isn’t murder at all. In fact, it just might be a powerful immunization against the pox.
Read full article...