MICHAEL FRIDJHON: There is a long list of chardonnays worth drinking

Impossible as this may be to imagine, chardonnay is a recent arrival in the international world of wine. As recently as the 1960s there were fewer than 500ha of chardonnay vineyards outside France. California’s total plantings were less than 75ha. In Australia there wasn’t much more (and some was sold as riesling).

There was nothing to speak of in SA until the 1980s. In France it was unknown at least by name. The use of varietal names wasn’t customary so people bought chablis (made entirely from chardonnay) or white burgundy or champagne (of which it is the dominant white cultivar) without ever needing to know the variety common to all of them.

By 2021 it had become the fifth most widely planted grape in the world, with at least 200,000ha distributed over every continent except Antarctica. It is second only to airén among white varieties. Despite a wobble in the 1980s, it is comfortably the most popular. Producers and consumers who entertain themselves by denigrating it are slightly more ridiculous than Luddites battling gamely to find an avenue which will lead them back into the Dark Ages.

Its popularity played into that brief moment of fragility, when the anti-chardonnay brigade preached their “anything but chardonnay” (ABC) message to yuppies for whom wine was really a fashion accessory rather than a beverage of choice. The occasion for the ABC campaign was the sudden flood of poorly made, often over-oaked and over-oxidised examples the Australians and Americans dished up to a market that favoured accessibility over precision. 

The return of chardonnay to its position of pre-eminence has been, in part, the result of the commitment of many high-end producers to make flinty “minerality” the hallmark of their wines, rather than the flabby opulence that seduced so many newcomers to wine in the 1990s.

Since the Cape’s love affair with chardonnay began significantly later than the other major wine producing countries, we avoided the worst of excesses of the 1990s. Our showy wines of that era were generally thoughtfully handled and survived the style: Mulderbosch’s barrel-fermented, made at the time by Mike Dobrovic, was a classic of its kind. Abrie Bruwer’s Springfield Methode Ancienne — in great vintages — was peerless and pure.

The move to less oaky, fresher expressions was partly driven by the pursuit of linearity, as if the terroir would somehow emerge unmediated by the role of the winemaker if the wine came to bottle prepubescent and gawky rather than ripe and fully formed.

As part of that same aesthetic, winemakers treated their fruit less oxidatively, leaving the future evolution to take place in the constrained space of airtight glass often, but not always, with a little too much sulphur as its constant companion. That fashion is still with us, and evidence of it is in the whiff of struck match (or even gunpowder/cordite) that contaminates the fruit of a number of high-end examples.

It should be clear that I’m not a great fan of overly austere chardonnay, which doesn’t mean that my preferred styles occupy the super-plush side of the spectrum. Good chardonnay is intense and expressive, and what hasn’t ripened on the vine is unlikely to ripen in the bottle. I’m also not averse to the judicious use of oak, as long the flavour of wood is not used to compensate for the lack of fruit.

I have a long (and by no means complete) list of Cape chardonnays worth drinking and worth cellaring. These include pretty much all of the Ionas, Delaire-Graffs, Kershaws, Paul Cluvers, Capensises and Jordans, the Glenelly Estate Reserve, Dewetshof The Site, GlenWood’s Grand Duc, Quoin Rock, Hamilton Russell, Oak Valley Groenlandberg, Talana Hill, Vriesenhof unwooded, Thorne & Daughters Menagerie Mountain, Julian Schaal, Survivor Tradauw Highlands, Boschendal Elgin, Neil Ellis Whitehall, DeMorgenzon Reserve, Storm Ridge, Cape of Good Hope and Rupert & Rothschild Baroness Nadine.

With the possible exception of chenin, there’s no other variety in the Cape where it’s so easy to find fabulous wines.

This column was originally published in Business Day.