Poor Chardonnay. It got too popular for its own good, and now it’s facing an epic backlash. “Anything but Chard,” say the trendy drinkers at the bottle shop and the wine bar.
Meanwhile, the Chardonnay bottles sit on the shelf with their golden, sloping shoulders and plead: Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful. Don’t hate me because I’m fruity and dry and crisp all at the same time. Don’t hate me because I grow everywhere, and I make almost any meal taste better! But nope–Chardonnay is not invited to the cool-bottles party with Gruner Vetliner and Albariño.
I’ll admit that I’m one of the people who rarely reaches for Chardonnays. I love it, but choosing Chardonnay feels like ordering a salad for lunch. (Fine for sometime later, but never what I’m craving right now.)
But I am wrong and so are all the other Chardonnay-snubbers. Chardonnay can be revelatory. And once in a while, you taste a Chardonnay that reminds you why Planet Earth fell in love with this grape in the first place. A textbook Chard that’s anything but basic.
Kith & Kin Chardonnay is just such a beauty. An approachable, crowd-pleasing bottle with the potential to wow even wine snobs and Chardonnay skeptics.
The Kith & Kin label occupies an important niche these days–mid-shelf wines affiliated with high-end producers. This wine is produced by Napa’s Round Pond Estates with fruit from Sonoma’s Russian River Valley. At $30 it’s more than I usually spend on a daily drinker, but I was persuaded when it stood out from its neighbors at an in-store tasting.
I originally intended to serve it at a Thanksgiving dinner with my grandparents (my grandma loves a Chardonnay). But there ended up being plenty of wine over the holidays so I kept it for a special evening at home with my wife, Sarah. We enjoyed it will a plate full of cheese and meats and vegetables, and it made nearly everything taste better–confirming my hunch that this would be an extraordinarily good dinner-party wine. As the name implies, it’s a wine to be shared with your favorite family and the best of friends.
Kith & Kin Chardonnay pours up as a sunny medium yellow with pronounced fresh fruit and floral aromas. There’s golden and Rome apples, fresh Meyer lemon, and the blended perfumes of a mixed bouquet of cut flowers. Underneath the farmers-market basket of aromas are subtle and pleasing oak and bread notes. No Twinkie or cupcake-frosting aromas here: It’s real-deal pastry, like a home-baked yellow bundt cake.
Taking a sip, some stone fruits emerge: White ripe peach and yellow apricot. Ripe Comice pear and tropical notes make their appearance, mingling with the all the other fruits like a punch bowl from heaven. It’s a lush, full mouthfeel balanced by a trace of minerality and a tart hint of green apple and persimmon. Only a hint of vanilla smoothness lingers to balance its high alcohol and persistent acidity.
Sarah–no Chardonnay fan, for the most part–marveled at the number and variety of fruit aromas on display in this wine. Shifting excitedly into wine-nerd mode, I grabbed my WSET textbook. I showed her how her tasting notes included almost every classic Chardonnay characteristic along the ripeness spectrum, from lemon and apple to stone fruit to pineapple.
Of course, Round Pound knows exactly what they’re doing: The winemakers notes reveal that they harvest the grapes at different ripeness levels and blend them to achieve a vast range of flavors. The judicious use of oak is in line with current trends, while the richness and intensity of this wine delivers what longtime Chardonnay drinkers expect. In short, it’s positively ambrosial.
As I write this, both California and wine are experiencing dark days. Wildfires are ravaging Los Angeles, wine consumption is falling off a cliff, and my phone is popping off with think-pieces foretelling the doom of both the wine industry and the California dream itself.
There is chaos at two ends of the market. Bulk wine is experiencing plummeting demand, and cult wines with their douchey waitlists and insane prices are pushing the limits of consumer patience. Perhaps it is finally time for California to look for more opportunities in the middle–bottles that exist somewhere in between the collector’s cellar and the grocery-store plonk.
We Texas wine lovers like to pick on California a little bit, but deep down we all know that California’s wine industry has pulled off amazing feats of winemaking and continues to do so. Call me a romantic, call me an optimist–but I think they’ll all recover from this moment. Chardonnay, too.
It is an inspiring thing to taste a bottle like this at this price point. We drank the Kith & Kin a few days ago, in one sitting, and I’m still thinking about it. It’s quality fruit, expertly made. It’s classic California Chardonnay.
Bottle: Kith & Kin Russian River Valley Chardonnay (2022)
Variety: Chardonnay (100%)
ABV: 14.5%
Suggested retail: $30
My rating: 9.3 (out of 10)
Further reading:
New Wine Review: Sorry California, No One Wants Your Cheap Bulk Wine Anymore
Forbes: Napa Valley Wine’s Average Price Now Over $100 Per Bottle
Review disclosure: I was not compensated or provided any free products for this review. Opinions expressed on The Wine Fairy blog are entirely my own.
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