Liquid Assets: Chardonnay doesn't have to be buttered up

New World wineries have been minding their ABCs. During recent visits to Napa, the only line I heard more often than "Cheers!" was "We're pulling back on the oak in our chardonnay." The results are there for everyone to taste, as more wineries have heeded the ABC (Anything But Chardonnay) movement and stopped turning out juice that tastes, in one winemaker's words, "like furniture slathered in butter."

Instead, there's a wide range of flavors in the California chardonnay aisles, from lean and crisp to creamy and smoky. Something for everyone, not just monolithic buttery, oaky beasts that prompted the ABC revolution a decade ago.

More and more New World chards never see the dark of oak. That trend started Down Under (where current exemplars include Grant Burge, Brancott and Kim Crawford), and has spread to our West Coast. Four Vines' "Naked" chard is a particularly tasty concoction at a reasonable price, and Tolosa's and Toad Hollow's efforts are worth checking out; at the higher end, Mer Soleil Silver is a beautiful unoaked effort.

Others have just a hint of oak. I've had yummy wines in this vein recently from Fantesca, DeLoach and, at the cheaper end, the Finca Sophenia from Argentina.

Meanwhile, some wineries have eliminated malolactic fermentation, a process that replaces malic acid with lactic acid and makes the wine a lot creamier. California's El Molino, Chateau Montelena and Hendry and Oregon's Chehalem provide stellar results.

Most West Coast wineries, though, are settling for a style somewhere between the old "butter bombs" and the more bracing, acidic wines from chardonnay's home base, Burgundy.

"Our fruit can't be made like Burgundy. They do malolactic on their chardonnay because they have to, because it's so acidic you would not be able to drink it," said winemaker Elias Fernandez, whose Shafer "Red Shoulders Ranch" Chardonnay is a fabulous amalgam of Old World style and New World fruit. "In California we're trying to hold as much acidity as we can because we have so much sun it [reduces] the malic acid. If you don't watch out, you get wines so flabby that they don't go well with food."

For years, this "flabby" style made Kendall-Jackson's Reserve Chardonnay the nation's bestselling white wine; naturally, other wineries followed suit. Soon, virtually all California chardonnays provided a big burst of vanilla or even crème-brûlée flavors. Which was fine, except that something was lost:

The fruit.

Juice from the chardonnay is always smooth and full-bodied. But the flavors vary from citrus to tropical fruit to, yes, something a bit creamy, depending on the soil and climate. The French, bless them, have long recognized and appreciated the importance of these variations.

Now there's nothing wrong with the K-J Reserve or the palates of the people who love it. And there are many thoroughly enjoyable wines made in that style, from J. Lohr and Murphy-Goode at the inexpensive end (under $20) to Chappellet and Rombauer in the medium ($30-ish) range on up to Martinelli and Aubert.

They just don't all have to taste like that.

Bill Ward • bill.ward@startribune.com