The Untold Reasons for Unwooded Chardonnay

Time and again we are told that the unwooded chardonnay was introduced to Australian wine drinkers as a new sensation. Winemakers were disillusioned by the glut of over-wooded chardonnay which gave nobody any idea how the grape really tasted. The uncluttered fruit-driven flavour of the unwooded variant would truly let chardonnay strut its stuff. It was a new wine for Australian conditions and for Australian cuisine. It was an innovative, original alternative to the splintery everyday chardonnay and, for the first time ever, would truly present the mouthfilling, bursting, pristine taste of chardonnay to all Australian wine drinkers.

Sure thing. Now the same people are arguing for unwooded cabernet.
Unwooded chardonnay exists in Australia simply because it is cheaper to make. The first to fall prey to the propaganda surrounding unwooded chardonnay were certain wine journalists whose understanding of wine was considerably less than their enthusiasm for a new headline. Furthermore, to suggest that Australian unwooded chardonnay is any sort of innovation simply ignores the fact that low to no-oak chardonnays have been fashioned in Chablis for hundreds of years.

Unwooded chardonnay first emerged in Australia when certain winemakers saw it as a God-sent opportunity to match the public’s growing distaste for oaky white wines with potentially massive cost reductions in the making of their chardonnay. Unwooded chardonnay avoids the principal cost factor associated with premium chardonnay – that of oak itself, which can cost $950 and above per 225 litre barrel, fully imported from France. The best Australian makers purchase most of their oak for their premium chardonnay this way.
It’s no accident that almost without exception the vineyards which ultimately became the first unwooded chardonnay producers were initially established to make chardonnay intended to be matured in oak. Furthermore, while most of the early examples came from premium cool climate regions like the Mornington Peninsula, Tasmania, the Adelaide Hills and Mount Barker, under labels such as David Wynn, Iron Pot Bay, Shaw & Smith, Plantagenet and T’Gallant, most unwooded is today pumped out from the warmer inland river areas.

All but the best cool climate chardonnay needs some measure of oak to have any length of palate. By itself, chardonnay creates a juicy, creamy wine, which promises the earth at the front of the palate but thereafter mainly fails to deliver. This effectively removes any potential to develop with age. The warmer the climate of origin, the oilier, fatter and less defined the wines tend to become and the faster their condition deteriorates in the bottle.

Unwooded chardonnay is essentially a one-dimensional wine with limited compatibility with food, made even more noticeable since a wine will fall away in the mouth if lacking a long, persistent finish. Clever use of yeast lees contact and secondary fermentation after the primary fermentation can make it more complex and interesting, but you still ponder why a small degree of oak could not have been introduced to finish the job properly. Cost, price and marketing are the answers! in about that order. One even begins to wonder how many of the so-called unwooded chardonnays are true to name.

Since it’s usually released to the marketplace in the same year it was produced, unwooded chardonnay generates cash return mere months after harvest, significantly sooner than for those premium chardonnay makers who release their wines between eighteen and thirty months after vintage. One of the crippling costs associated with the wine industry is the cost of stock and associated money and interest charges. Unwooded chardonnay makes a very convenient short circuit, especially for the astounding proportion of small vineyard operators who entered the industry without even the pretence of a business plan and for whom expensive new oak simply meant another visit to the bank manager.

It’s utterly paradoxical that in an effort to make a wine which costs them less to make and their consumers less to buy, that these winemakers have created a wine style which loses heavily against its direct competition in terms of value for money. There are perhaps half a dozen decent unwooded chardonnays made in Australia worth drinking. The rest provide sound reason for buying a riesling, a semillon, or a WA Classic instead. The only examples I would confidently choose are from Plantagenet, Shaw & Smith, Chapel Hill and David Wynn.

The WA Classic phenomenon provides just another reason why other people – and not you – should be left to seek the highly questionable pleasures offered by unwooded chardonnay. Please login to post comment