CHARDONNAY IN CALIFORNIA: THE 20TH CENTURY

The Wente Bros winery in Livermore Valley, east of San Francisco, was the great pioneer of 20th-century California Chardonnay. The Wente clones, and those derived from them, were the result of genetic research carried out by Ernest Wente, son of the founder Carl. Ernest began experimenting with the then-obscure variety in 1912, importing his stock from France’s University of Montpellier. Wente was almost the only producer of Chardonnay until the 1950s, when Stony Hill winery in Napa and Hanzell in Sonoma became well-known for their varietal wines. At the Judgement of Paris tasting in 1976, Chateau Montelena’s 1973 Chardonnay from Napa beat the white Burgundies present, ensuring its future as the Golden State’s key white grape.