Unwooded Chardonnay
With over 300,000 acres dedicated to its production worldwide, Chardonnay is the most popular white wine grape in Australia and in the world.
One of the reasons for the popularity of Chardonnay is its versatility. It can be made either as a wooded or unwooded variety, a distinction that refers mainly to the wine’s production process, which has a huge bearing on its flavour and aroma.
Wooded Chardonnay is considered to be the more complex among the two ("complexity" is a reference to the rich and deep quality of the wine), which is a great compliment. On the other hand, there is much to be said about the fine qualities of unwooded Chardonnay. What unwooded Chardonnay lacks in complexity, it tries to make up in structure and balance.
Wooded Chardonnay goes through two processes that unwooded Chardonnay does not. Initially, in wooded Chardonnay, the wine grapes are aged in oak barrels (hence the term “wooded”) and then undergo a so-called malolactic fermentation, a process that softens the wine’s acidity and lessens the aftertaste of the oak.
Unwooded Chardonnay, without the oak aging process, is generally a soft wine and usually comes in fruity flavours as opposed to wooded Chardonnay, which can either have an “oakier” characteristic as well as touches of vanilla, caramel and butter in its flavour and aroma. Some winemakers prefer to lightly toast the inside surfaces of the oak barrels to give the Chardonnay a toasty and spicy characteristic as well as a touch of coconut or vanilla to its aroma.
In Chablis, France, a place considered to be the historic home of Chardonnay, wine makers have traditionally preferred the unwooded variety. They typically do not use either oak treatment or malolactic fermentation when producing wine. Through more natural and traditional wine making, wine producers create unwooded Chardonnay with a generally higher and more noticeable acidity or, as wine connoisseurs say, more focus on “minerality and purity.”
Aside from France, major wine growing countries like the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, Chile and South Africa are among the leading producers of unwooded Chardonnay. California in the United States is the biggest source of Chardonnay wine grapes, with over 100,000 acres of vineyards. Unfortunately, there are no worldwide figures that differentiate production of wooded from unwooded Chardonnay.
In Australia, Chardonnay is the leading white wine variety but there is a dearth of official statistics to distinguish the production of wooded and unwooded Chardonnay as well. In any case, the overall figures are telling. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, a record 2,162 hectares was dedicated to planting Chardonnay wine grapes in 2005, making it the most widely planted wine grape variety in Australia, dwarfing the second place Shiraz wine grapes, which had 1,523 hectares.
Chardonnay accounts for 44.5% of all wine grapes vineyard areas dedicated to producing white wine (bearing and non-bearing) followed by Sauvignon Blanc (472 hectares), Pinot Gris (228 hectares), Smillon (199 hectares), Riesling (125 hectares), Viognier (122 hectares), Muscat Gordo Blanco (84 hectares), Sultana (59 hectares) and Colombard 42 hectares).
