Winemaking Trend: Unoaked Chardonnay's

As witnessed by two articles on the same day, a very popular topic is oaking strategies for Chardonnay.

Linda Murphy's article, "When oak gets in the way" in SF Gate about the growing winemaking trend to use less oak on Chardonnays.
I shy away from the over-the-top, buttery, oaky, hit-you-over-the-head with a 2X4 California Chardonnay's. My home wine 2001 Eno Chardonnay- Ritchie Vineyard (Russian River) was in oak for a barrel fermentation lasting only 2.5 weeks after that I went to stainless steel. Many Australian Chardonnay's are referred to as naked-- having never seen oak or as unwooded or unoaked.

Murphy describes the mini-revolt,

...some wine drinkers and winemakers are tired of heavily oaked Chardonnay. They want a truer expression of fruit, a crisper wine that tastes of the grape and not of a two-by-four.

...Some makers of "unoaked" Chardonnays use neutral barrels to round out the wine and add texture; others do this with malolactic fermentation.

..."Wine develops flavor and aroma better in barrels than in tanks, so we ferment in stainless steel and finish the wine in older barrels that have minimal, if any, oak influence," says Morgan Winery owner Dan Lee.

Laurie Daniel's article "Many chardonnay makers are going back to basics"reports in the Mercury News expresses similar sentiments. She states her disdain for,

...sweet, toasty, even charry notes from new oak barrels (or, in the case of less expensive chardonnay, oak chips), movie-popcorn butter flavoring from heavy-handed use of malolactic fermentation.

She also describes the how malolactic fermentation, a secondary fermenation, can contribute to the flavor profile,

By avoiding M.L., the winemakers are able to preserve freshness and acidity in the grapes.

Malolactic fermentation isn't inherently bad. Many chardonnays from very cool climates would simply be too tart without it. It's a necessary tool in Burgundy, for example, where chardonnay rarely achieves the kind of ripeness that's possible even in California's cooler growing regions.

But it's interesting to note that these new no- and minimal-M.L. wines are being made from cooler-climate grapes.

Pete Danko's post on the West Coast Wine Network corrects Laurie Daniel,
on a common mistake.

associating the "buttery nature" of ML'd Chard to lactic acid. In fact, this is the ML byproduct diacetyl at work. Lactic acid itself is in no way "buttery."
[ML's analogy to milk is not quite correct; yes, it is less acid than malic by about half--but it is hardly a rich, smooth acid ... Indeed, lactic acid is more correctly likened to the slightly sour acidity one finds in yogurt or buttermilk.