Chardonnay – All or Nothing

Dear,

there was a time, in the nineties, when refusing Chardonnay passed in America for a mark of good taste. “Anything but Chardonnay” went the slogan, and it was the price of a decade in which new oak and full malolactic had turned the grape into a kind of liquid vanilla butter. The grape itself could not have cared less. It is, and I mean this as a compliment, all or nothing. Left to itself it smells of almost nothing, and that is precisely why it can become everything, the best that Chablis, Meursault or Champagne have to offer, or else nothing, the vanilla butter on the supermarket shelf. It all depends on where it grows and who brings it into the cellar. The winemaker decides what is made of it. The soil decides what it makes of itself.

What interests me about Chardonnay is less the grape than the place. Hence this letter: six places where the variety becomes something particular, and two wines from each, the one the house relies on day to day, and the one from its best site. Two cases, approx. €212 and approx. €552. Most of the difference is Burgundy, and I will come to that shortly.

Case 1 · Six Places

Chablis 2025 · Bourgogne VV 2023 · Pouilly-Vinzelles Zen 2023 · Bassgeige 2023 · Ried Sulz 2021 · Brut Réserve

Case 2 · Six Places. Their Best.

Vaudésir 2023 · Charmes 2024 · Au Vignerais 2023 · Kirchberg GG 2022 · Steilriegel 2020 · Caudalies

One click adds all six to your basket.
You can remove or swap individual bottles there, including between the two cases.

Chablis

Chablis lies a good hundred kilometres north of the Côte d’Or, on limestone laid down by a Jurassic sea and full of tiny fossilised oysters. Geologists name the layer after the village of Kimmeridge in Dorset, where it surfaces on the English coast, which explains why the English have always regarded Chablis as their own white wine. Domaine de l’Enclos is young and old at once. Romain and Damien Bouchard founded it in 2016, after their father Pascal had sold his négociant business to Albert Bichot and kept the vines, which I consider the wiser half of the deal. Some 36 hectares, certified organic, and a cellar they built half into the ground. In Chablis the 2025 harvest began on 18 August, after two heatwaves. Twenty years ago that would have been unthinkable, and yet the Burgundy wine board calls the vintage balanced, with moderate alcohol.

Chablis 2025

Chardonnay · Chablis · approx. €26

Twelve hectares of parcels around Chablis, vines around thirty years old, stainless steel. Green apple, oyster shell, lemony, with a cutting edge. No oak, no fat, no pretence. I have not had a better Chablis for €26 in a long time.

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Chablis Grand Cru Vaudésir 2023

Chardonnay · Chablis Grand Cru · approx. €77

In Chablis, Grand Cru is a single hillside above the Serein: 99 hectares, seven names, one and a half per cent of the harvest. Vaudésir is the small side valley within it, and the Bouchards’ piece of it, 0.57 hectares on the south-facing slope, was planted by their father in 1992. Ripe lemon, quince, honey, with stone underneath, broad and silky and still closed. Set against what the Côte d’Or charges for its great vineyards, a Chablis Grand Cru at €77 is almost an oversight.

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Meursault

Meursault has no Grand Cru, and it does not need one. Rémi Jobard, son of Charles and nephew of François, has made the wine since the early nineties, without herbicides since 1994 and certified organic since 2011, and he is one of the few in the village you can still buy from without connections. His grapes spend at least six hours in the press, usually the whole night, and nobody breaks up the press cake, because the juice runs clearer that way. The wine is raised half in barriques and half in large foudres, nearly all from the Austrian cooper Stockinger, a fifth of them new. At Jobard’s the oak is furniture, not seasoning.

Bourgogne Côte d'Or Vieilles Vignes 2023

Chardonnay · Bourgogne · approx. €46

Six parcels within the commune of Meursault, below the village, vines over forty years old. The label says Bourgogne, because vines on the flat ground there may not carry the village name. The glass says Meursault. Yellow apple, hazelnut, bread dough, dense, with stone at the end. If you want to understand the difference between a Bourgogne and a Bourgogne, start here.

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Meursault 1er Cru Les Charmes 2024

Chardonnay · Meursault Premier Cru · approx. €184

At 31 hectares Les Charmes is the largest Premier Cru in the village, and Jobard’s sixteen ares lie at the top, up against Perrières, where the good parcels are. The 2024 vintage is one the growers would rather forget: rain until September, frost in April, hail in May, a quarter less Chardonnay across the Côte d’Or. What remained is precise and taut, without an ounce of fat. €184 is a lot of money, and these days it is the norm for a Meursault Premier Cru. Do not open it before 2029.

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Mâconnais

If I give Burgundy drinkers one piece of advice, it is this: look south. The Mâconnais is where Burgundy ends and where Chardonnay is still affordable, and the brothers Jean-Philippe and Jean-Guillaume Bret are the reason not to buy there on price alone. They took over La Soufrandière in Vinzelles in 2000, four and a half hectares their grandparents had bought in 1947, and have farmed biodynamically from their first harvest, with Demeter certification since 2006. Their Zen wines receive no sulphur during fermentation and ageing, and ten to twenty milligrams per litre before bottling, where Demeter allows ninety. There is no fining and no filtering, and the brothers ask that these wines be stored no warmer than fifteen degrees. I would do as they say.

Pouilly-Vinzelles Cuvée Zen 2023

Chardonnay · Pouilly-Vinzelles · approx. €36

Pouilly-Vinzelles has fifty hectares, its neighbour Pouilly-Fuissé eight hundred. The vines in Les Quarts are around fifty years old, the soil is red clay over limestone, and the summer of 2023 was hot. Yellow apple, honeydew melon, round and juicy, with a saline edge that keeps the wine upright. With it, a roast chicken, and nobody will ask what the bottle cost.

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Pouilly-Fuissé 1er Cru Au Vignerais Zen 2023

Chardonnay · Pouilly-Fuissé Premier Cru · approx. €59

Pouilly-Fuissé only gained Premiers Crus with the 2020 vintage, 22 of them, and Au Vignerais, on the southern flank of the Rock of Solutré, is one. Wine from here used to go to the négociants as must. The Brets have half a hectare, vines thirty-five years old, eleven months in old oak. White peach, quince, warm stone, more powerful than the Vinzelles, with the same drive. A Premier Cru for €59. In Meursault the same words cost three times as much, and I am not sure the difference in the glass is always that great.

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Kaiserstuhl

That Germany did not permit Chardonnay until 1991 is one of the oddities of German wine law, which mistrusted the variety for decades while Pinot Blanc in the next row counted as a native. Around that year Franz Keller in Oberbergen planted it in the Oberrotweiler Kirchberg, with vines from Burgundy. The Kaiserstuhl is a volcano, silent for fifteen to nineteen million years, and in the Ice Age the wind laid loess over it. The two wines show exactly these two layers. Chardonnay accounts for only eight per cent of Keller’s vineyards, which surprises me, given the quality of this Grosses Gewächs. The estate began converting to organic farming in 2022 and has been certified since the 2024 vintage, so both wines here come from the conversion years.

Oberbergener Bassgeige Chardonnay Erste Lage 2023

Chardonnay · Kaiserstuhl · approx. €21

Loess over volcanic rock, a year in barrique. Apricot, quince, flint, then salted butter, creamy but with drive. The least expensive wine in this letter, and the one whose label I stared at longest. With it, roast pumpkin.

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Kirchberg Oberrotweil Chardonnay GG 2022

Chardonnay · Kaiserstuhl, Grosse Lage · approx. €77

The Kirchberg opens towards the Burgundian Gate and is cooler for it. Keller’s parcel lies at the foot of the slope, on pale phonolite scree. A year in wood, a third of it new, then six months on the lees in steel. Lime zest, lemongrass, cold ash, lean, chalky, saline. Set beside the Bassgeige it is the sterner of the two, and the one that will have more to say in five years. With it, pike-perch in brown butter.

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Südsteiermark

The Styrians call the variety Morillon, and for a long time they did not know they had Chardonnay in their vineyards. Until the eighties Morillon was taken for a form of Pinot Blanc, and only when French vine material was imported did a detail of the leaf give the game away. Austria approved the variety in 1986. Manfred Tement was sixteen in 1976 when his father died and he took over three hectares. Today there are almost a hundred, twenty of them in Slovenia, and his sons Armin and Stefan make the wine. Organic since 2018, Demeter since the 2022 vintage. Our two wines are older and do not yet carry the Demeter seal.

Ried Sulz Morillon Erste STK Lage 2021

Morillon · Südsteiermark · approx. €35

Sulz is a south-facing bowl of blue and brown calcareous marl, rising to 470 metres. Two years on the lees in old wood, unfiltered, fourteen per cent alcohol. Yellow apple, pear, a smoky note from the cask, richness and power, held straight by the acidity. Falstaff gave the next vintage, the 2022, 95 points, and I do not find the 2021 any lesser, only rounder. With it, Backhendl, the Styrian fried chicken.

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Ried Zieregg Steilriegel Morillon Große STK Lage 2020

Morillon · Südsteiermark · approx. €61

Zieregg is a coral reef sixteen million years old, and Tement’s home vineyard. Since the 2022 vineyard regulations no longer allow parcel names, the family has divided it, from the 2020 vintage on, into four Rieden, as Austrians call their single vineyards. Steilriegel is the part the family has owned longest, over ninety per cent Morillon, and this is its first vintage, with 96 Falstaff points. Fresh apple, meadow herbs, lime, taut and bright, with peach on the finish. A Chardonnay nobody in Meursault would recognise, and I mean that as praise. With it, smoked char.

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Champagne, Côte des Blancs

The Côte des Blancs south of Épernay is pure chalk, and six of its villages are Grand Cru: Chouilly, Oiry, Cramant, Avize, Oger and Le Mesnil-sur-Oger. A Blanc de Blancs from here is Chardonnay and nothing else and, I am firmly convinced, the most underrated white wine to drink with food. The good ones last at the table as long as a Meursault. Ours come from Chouilly, the northernmost of the six villages, and from Avize.

Vazart-Coquart Brut Réserve Blanc de Blancs Grand Cru

Chardonnay · Chouilly · approx. €46

Jean-Pierre Vazart farms eleven hectares in thirty parcels, all in Chouilly, with vines averaging 45 years. Since 1982 the family has kept a réserve perpétuelle, a reserve wine from which around forty per cent is drawn each year and replaced with the new harvest. The house has been certified organic since 2020, though this cuvée is not, because of the old reserve, and I find that honesty more appealing than many a seal. Croissant, salted butter, apricot, creamy and straight, low in dosage, with chalk on the finish. Decanter gave the current release 94 points.

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De Sousa Cuvée des Caudalies Blanc de Blancs Grand Cru Extra Brut

Chardonnay · Avize · approx. €92

Erick de Sousa converted his vines in Avize to biodynamics in 1999, with Demeter certification since 2013. He died in January 2023, and his children Charlotte, Julie and Valentin now run the house. The Caudalies comes from vines over fifty years old and ferments entirely in oak. Half of it is reserve wine from a solera begun in 1995, and the dosage is around five grams. A caudalie is one second of finish, and the name is no exaggeration. Clementine peel, cinnamon, liquorice, creamy, long, saline at the end, broader and deeper than the Vazart. This is a Champagne that stays on the table for the whole meal.

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Where do you start?

With the Champagne, at eight degrees. Chablis and Mâconnais well chilled, the other whites at twelve degrees, which means out of the fridge half an hour before the meal, or you will not taste the place. Meursault and Steilriegel benefit from some air.

1× Chablis → oyster shell
1× Meursault → hazelnut and stone
1× Mâconnais → no sulphur until bottling
1× Kaiserstuhl → volcano and loess
1× Südsteiermark → Morillon
1× Côte des Blancs → Chardonnay that sparkles

One click adds all six to your basket. You can remove or swap individual bottles there.

We stock more than 170 Chardonnays, from just over twenty euros up to Premiers Crus from Meursault and Puligny. Three that only just missed the cut: the Clos Béru, a walled vineyard in the heart of Chablis, approx. €99. The Auxey-Duresses Monopole from Clos du Moulin aux Moines, approx. €52. And Zind-Humbrecht’s Chardonnay from the Clos Windsbuhl, approx. €35.

Warm regards from Berlin,

Lisa and the team at
Living Wines
Lebendige Weine

P.S.: The Pinot Blanc mix-up caught out Burgenland as well. In 1961 Velich in Apetlon planted young vines from a Styrian nursery, sold as Pinot Blanc. They were Morillon, and from those vines comes the Tiglat, one of Austria’s best-known Chardonnays. We have the 2022 for approx. €81.

BUDGET WINE OF THE WEEK

Chardonnay Leithaberg DAC 2024, Heinrich

Chardonnay · Leithaberg, Burgenland · approx. €18

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