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Tim Atkin MW: Taking on white Burgundy

At a recent blind tasting of high-quality Chardonnays, I found myself thinking about the B word. In 1991, I wrote a book about the variety (long out of print, alas). To research it, I travelled widely. Tough gig, right? The assumption then, especially in the New World, was that the greatest Chardonnays were all made in Burgundy. It was the altar at which everyone genuflected. From McMinnville to Carneros, Hawke’s Bay to the Yarra Valley, Casablanca to Robertson, everyone wanted to emulate Burgundy, or at least their interpretation of it.

How things have changed in the intervening 35 years. For a start, it was much easier then to identify top white Burgundies in a line-up of global Chardonnays. Today, it is very difficult, even for expert tasters. The main reason for this is that the rest of the world has upped its game, thanks to superior clones, often from Burgundy, cooler sites and better winemaking. Burgundy has also got considerably warmer. The last truly great white wine vintage was 2014.

These days, thank goodness, you can find world-class Chardonnays in lots of places outside Burgundy, most notably Argentina, Australia, Chile, New Zealand, South Africa and the United States. (Ronan Sayburn MS introduced me to a superb Chinese one recently.) To take a few of my favourites from each of those countries, think Catena Zapata, Tolpuddle, Sol de Sol, Kumeu River, Restless River and Sandhi. All of them could go toe-to-toe with top Burgundies.

That was the part of the reasoning behind the ambitious event organised by Steve Smith MW, called Opposites Attract. Held on separate dates in Christchurch, London and the Côte de Nuits, it featured 24 wines – 10 from Pyramid Valley and Smith & Sheth, where Steve is in charge, and 14 from Burgundy.

The Burgundies were all 2023s – not the greatest recent vintage, but included some very smart producers; the Kiwi wines, some of which were making their debut, were from the ‘classic’ 2024 growing season. Could New Zealand deliver what an Australian friend once identified as the key to success in the market: similar or better quality at half the price?

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Burgundy vs New Zealand

The 43 tasters, including 13 Masters of Wine and four Master Sommeliers, were asked to score the wines out of 100 and identify the origin of each: Burgundy or New Zealand? The wines were divided into four flights: Everyday Deliciousness, Cool & Refreshing, Singularity & Special Occasions and Rare & Definitive. How did I do in spotting the Burgundies? My scores were three out of five on flights one and two, five out of seven on flight three and four out of seven on flight four. So, not bad. But the tasting illustrated my point about what we mean by Burgundian. Is malolactic fermentation part of the accepted range of styles? What about flinty/struck-match characters?

The wine I liked most was the fourth pour in the Singularity & Special Occasions line-up. It was stunning. Burgundy or New Zealand? I changed my mind four times. It was so good it had to come from the Côte de Beaune, my sense of prejudice told me. But I plumped for New Zealand in the end. Sure enough, it was the 2024 Smith & Sheth Onewa Chardonnay from the Gimblett Gravels in Hawke’s Bay, which will retail for around £60 on release.

Overall, the Kiwi wines topped two of the four categories and should have won the third one, too. The Onewa Chardonnay narrowly lost out to the 2023 Domaine Guffens-Heynen Saint Véran Clos de Poncetys. Not for the first time, the tastings demonstrated what some of us already know. Steve Smith said at the outset that “Burgundy is home to the greatest wines made from the Chardonnay grape”, but I’m not sure that’s true any more, especially with climate change. Domaine Leflaive in Puligny-Montrachet finished picking on 18 August this year. Yup, finished. These days, top Chardonnay is a level playing field, except when it comes to value for money.

• New Zealand
• price
• quality
• Chardonnay
• Burgundy
• Burgundian
• challenge
• change