Uncorked: Crisp white wines pair with sizzling summer

While her classmates dreamed of “dotting the i” in a marching band formation, Jenna Davis wanted her hands in the dirt.

A graduate of The Ohio State University, where being the person to stand in the “i” in the scripted Ohio State formation the marching band gets into prior to a football game is a grand honor, the associate winemaker at Russian River Valley winery DuMOL was romanced by the wine industry.

“In high school, nobody thinks of making wine,” Davis said. “It’s not a career you’ve heard anyone doing. I had a family friend that was a Napa winemaker, and thought that sounded awesome. I always worked at plant nurseries, liked chemistry and bio chemistry, and winemaking hit all the marks of what I wanted to do.”

Because she was at Ohio State and not a California school with well-renowned winemaking programs, she had to get creative.

“Food science was as close as I could get at Ohio State,” Davis said. “I worked a harvest at DuMOL, went to Australia, then to Napa for a bit. I liked this crazy winemaking thing, and went back to school. But the more I got into it, with every new step, I fell in love.”

This week, chardonnay comes into focus. It’s a grape winemakers love to work because of the impact they can have on what gets bottled. Even as the industry has turned toward crispy, mineral-driven wines with fresh fruit flavors, there’s a wide range of styles out there to appeal to everyone.

The DuMOL Highland Divide Chardonnay 2019 ($60) had tropical fruit flavors, butterscotch, toasty almond notes and a luxuriously full mouthfeel.

“Chardonnay is one of the wines that can go in many different directions stylistically,” FEL director of winemaking Ryan Hodgins said. “As of late, (winemaker) Sarah Green and I have had an expensive white Burgundy habit, and that’s the holy grail for us with their struck-match, flinty note. We make 200 cases, and spend more time thinking about those 500 gallons than any other.”

The FEL Savoy Vineyard 2020 ($34) was a deep golden color with peach, thyme and almond flavors. A chalky-hot-rock, hot-iron-shavings minerality permeated the finish.

When asked about the chardonnay, Hodgins was thrilled.

“Most of the time, I have to bring up the chardonnay, everyone wants to talk about the pinot,” he joked.

In the cellar, Davis was very deliberate as she included the stems for a whole-cluster press. A pneumatic press, similar to the ones used on German riesling, lasted over five hours. Most chardonnay would be pressed off in less than two hours.

But because DuMOL works with the Wente clone and gets lots of “hens and chicks,” fruit that might not be all equal in size or ripeness in their clusters, Davis wants to capture all the intensity offered.

“We get a lot of solids in the juice,” Davis said. “That’s the soul of chardonnay. We let it oxidize and don’t sulfur it, then let it settle in the tank, and take it to barrel to ferment. Tension is what we are after. The best Grand Crus have that yin and yang – you want a wine with power, but if you don’t have freshness and acidity to balance that out, it won’t be a good wine.”

A slow fermentation process in 500-liter, big cigar barrels and foudres that are Austrian and French oak is followed by an extended three-to-six-month aging in stainless steel that Davis said “adds another level of complexity to the wine.”

At FEL, Hodgins and Green also are busy in the cellar with four different fermentation regimes that feature 500-liter barrels, puncheons, stainless steel and Burgundy barrels.

“We’re constantly tinkering,” Hodgins said. “We’re trying to maximize that noble reduction of flintiness and minerality that the site naturally gives us.”

For the Highland Divide chardonnay, Davis used a blend of her three favorite sites in the Green Valley AVA in the southwestern corner of the Russian River Valley. Plenty of sunshine, lean soils and thick fog and cool nights are key terroir featured in the area. Nighttime lows in the 50s lead to what Davis said are “fresh, zesty wines.”

“We call it the tenderloin,” Davis said. ‘We get pure fruit power and [a] lot of coastal influence and the coastal vibrancy.”

Both winemakers captured the special nature of their vineyard.

“If you are working with really aromatic white wines, it’s a different philosophy,” Davis said. “You want to protect and preserve. Chardonnay doesn’t have that; it’s a little more of a blank canvas that way. It shows its site like pinot does. You can make expressive, vineyard-driven wines.”

TASTING NOTES

• Anaba Sonoma Coast Chardonnay 2019 ($40): Pear, green apple and sage on the nose with pear and green apple flavors. Hints of toasty, thinly sliced almonds; lean in style with a racy finish that embraced its acidity.

• Diatom Santa Barbara County Chardonnay 2021 ($27): From winemaker Greg Brewer, the 2020 Wine Enthusiast Winemaker of the Year, comes a refreshing white with mossy rock, sea salt, dried apricot and Meyer lemon.

• Gran Moraine Chardonnay Yamhill-Carlton 2018 ($45): Winemaker Shane Moore loves acidity in white wines, and shows it off here. Iron-like minerality, lemon flavors and an oily texture.

• Penner-Ash Chardonnay Willamette Valley 2019 ($45): The citrus in the wine is easy to fall in love with, as apple, pear and a little toasty oak swing in on the finish.

• WillaKenzie Chardonnay Willamette Valley 2019 ($35): Layers of citrus fruit; lemon, tangerine pith combine with zippy diced ginger notes on the finish.

• James Nokes has been tasting, touring and collecting in the wine world for several years. Email him at jamesnokes25@yahoo.com.