Three Bottles of Chardonnay Part 1

Angella Aiello: Well, hi there, everybody. I’m here with Tony Aspler, a great Canadian wine veteran, I guess you could say. And we’re going to be trying doing a little bit of a horizontal tasting between some reds and some whites from around the world. The whites are going to be Chardonnay and the reds are going to be a Syrah Shiraz. So, yeah Tony, what do you think about the whites we have lined up here? Tony Aspler: Well, these are three Chardonnays and they come from respectively from Burgundy, from Niagara Peninsula and from South Australia. Interestingly enough, the Canadian representative here, Henry of Pehlam, the wine maker Ron Giesbrecht calls Chardonnay the chicken of la vineyard, which basically means that you can do anything you want with it and it will taste the way you wanted to taste. Unlike Riesling which when you get that grape from the vineyard, that’s what you get in the bottle but Chardonnay you can do so many different things to it. You can make it in a stainless steel and have really crisp dry wine, or you can ferment it in barrels and get some oak component. You can mix it stainless steel and oak age wine. You can use the technique called batonnage which is stirring the lees in the barrel, so you are extracting more flavor. So, basically it’s a wine maker’s wine as opposed to wine growers wine. Angiello Aeillo: And we’re doing it from talking about the three different geographical regions. What do you think we’re going to expect when it comes down to tasting these wines? Tony Aspler: Well, the first one is the Burgundy that comes from the Maconnais, the Macon region, which is the southern part of Burgundy and it is the warmest part, so that should have a sort of more pineapple note. If you are going further north in Burgundy and going to the Côte d'Or, you’ll get more of an apple character, and if you’re going to re lead to the northerly part, which is Chablis, you’ll get that steely, very lemony kind of flavor and that really has to do with how ripe the grapes are getting because the riper the grape, the higher the sugar. The more extract, the higher potential alcohol you’re going to get. The Henry of Pehlam from Niagara, that’s going to be more in the style of the white Burgundy because Ron Giesbrecht, the wine maker uses sort of the same Burgundian technique. So, there’s going to be a similarity between those two wines. The third wine, the Wolf Blass Chardonnay comes from South Australia and that is going to be very rich and very oaky. We’re going to see a real difference between the Australian style, and the European, and the Canadian style. Angella Aiello: So you would say these two are going to be probably taste more or less like and this is going to be sort of different. Tony Aspler: Yes. Angella Aiello: Is that relative for most of the Australian Chardonnays, and sort of, is that generally speaking or is that just with these wines? Tony Aspler: I think you’re going to find that Australia because of the warmth they get, the grapes ripen. They get big flavors and it has lots of the Australian personality. They’re outgoing. They’re extrovert and their wines are the same way. And their Chardonnay of course, has grown in different soils and this one is South Australia so this could come from anywhere in South Australia. These are more specific. The Chardonnay is from Niagara Peninsula. It’s from a specific, very small region area in the peninsula and of course from vineyards around the village of Macanloni, so this you are going to find distinctively different from the other two. Angella Aiello: Well, let’s crack and open it, and see what they taste like. Tony Aspler: Indeed.