In the wine-growing regions of North Carolina near the Blue Ridge Mountains, controversy swirls around understanding the relationship between grapes and rocks. On one side, geologists and vintners (I am neither but I was here for a Carolina Geological Society‘s conference with Tom (pictured below).) Some believe the minerals affect terroir and “mineral” is a common descriptor in the wine business. To others in our group, the argument falters when the taste of minerals is analyzed…there isn’t one. How can such a well-understood descriptor have meaning if minerals have no taste? Cheers to more research required on that one.

Another controversy surfaced. For some white wine drinkers, the simple word “chardonnay” generates disagreements. Some prize its buttery, oaked-up California body, which makes drinkers of other whites recoil. My favorite – the clean, crisp Chablis style – is understood by others as too simple or flat. But I am a failure at wine snobbery. My relationship with soft white wines made with the chardonnay grape has lasted almost 50 years. All my favorites, the Champagnes of Champagne, the Chablis’s of Chablis, the Vouvrays of the Loire – all owe something to the pervasive green grape used to blend so many white wines, the Chardonnay grape. As climate change rewrites the rules on what grows where, I begin to see a research opportunity.

This east-coast wine region in the fertile Carolina hills is the fifth largest wine-growing region in the USA. When I got back to my New England farmhouse, I planted a few stalks I found at the grocery store. If not fine wine, I reasoned, maybe raisins. The experiment bore fruit. Our first bunch of grapes ripened in September 2023. Next year, we plant more.

Chardonnay (native to the Burgundy region of France) is an important component of many sparkling wines around the world, including French Champagne and Franciacorta in Italy.   Chardonnay’s popularity peaked in the late 1980s, then gave way to a backlash among those wine connoisseurs who saw the grape as a leading negative component of the globalization of wine. Nonetheless, it is one of the most widely planted grape varieties, with 210,000 hectares (520,000 acres) worldwide, second only to Airén among white wine grapes and fifth among all wine grapes.*

*According to Wikipedia:

Chardonnay (UK: /ˈʃɑːrdəneɪ/, US: /ˌʃɑːrdənˈeɪ/,^[1][2] French: [ʃaʁdɔnɛ] (listen)) is a green-skinned grape variety used in the production of white wine. The variety originated in the Burgundy wine region of eastern France, but is now grown wherever wine is produced, from England to New Zealand. For new and developing wine regions, growing Chardonnay is seen as a ‘rite of passage‘ and an easy entry into the international wine market.^[3]

The Chardonnay grape itself is neutral, with many of the flavors commonly associated with the wine being derived from such influences as terroir and oak.^[4] It is vinified in many different styles, from the lean, crisply mineral wines of Chablis, France, to New World wines with oak and tropical fruit flavors. In cool climates (such as Chablis and the Carneros AVA of California), Chardonnay wine tends to be medium to light body with noticeable acidity and flavors of green plum, apple, and pear. In warmer locations (such as the Adelaide Hills and Mornington Peninsula in Australia and Gisborne and Marlborough region of New Zealand), the flavors become more citrus, peach, and melon, while in very warm locations (such as the Central Coast AVA of California), more fig and tropical fruit notes such as banana and mango come out. Wines that have gone through malolactic fermentation tend to have softer acidity and fruit flavors with buttery mouthfeel and hazelnut notes.^[5]

Champagne, Chablis, and Burgundy account for more than three-fifths of all Chardonnay plantings in France. The next-largest concentration is found in the Languedoc, where it was first planted around the town of Limoux and up to 30% can be blended with Mauzac in the sparkling Blanquette de Li

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