Judging Chardonnay

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You can learn surprising things tasting a couple of hundred wines at one sitting. Two weeks ago, sniffing and spitting with three other judges at the 2008 Los Angeles International Wine & Spirits Competition, I learned that, on average, cheaper Chardonnays can be a better bet than the pricey ones.

Nine a.m. Wednesday morning I faced a semicircle of wine glasses, each holding an ounce and a half of Chardonnay. Our group was to decide which of 44 barrel-fermented Chardonnays priced $12 or less deserved a medal, either Best of Show, Gold, Silver or Bronze. Teed up to taste next were nine barrel-fermented Chardonnays with retail prices exceeding $23.01. Competitions like this are blind tastings, with the identity of the wines unknown to the judges. We assumed most of the wines were from California because the annual competition associated with the Los Angeles County Fair draws heavily from wineries within the state.

After tasting through the 44 cheapies, it took me a moment to fully appreciate their nearly uniform quality. Sure, there were a handful of nasty surprises -- some tart lemons, a few tainted with bacteria, a dullard here and there -- but most of the wines were simple, bright and clean, well-made in a restrained Chablis-style that offered nice fruit flavors. While our group argued over which wines deserved Gold (we picked two), we were quick to award most of the rest of the wines Silver and Bronze.

BUYER BEWARE when you decide to splurge on more expensive Chardonnay. I wrote ‘yuck’ after two wines with overwhelming ‘oak’ flavors (think wine steeped with bushels of oak chips). Other wines had a disjointed and tart acidity, most likely the result of added acid that failed to fully integrate into the wine. While three wines were Gold quality, the rest were far inferior to most of their less expensive brothers.

-- Corie Brown