Chardonnay 101

I’ve enjoyed wine for many years. I was lucky enough to travel to New York often for business, and since my generous boss was footing the bill, we enjoyed a lot of fine wine. Of course, we followed the rituals—swirling the glass, inspecting the cork, and savoring every sip. How we perceive wine, though, is all about context. Decades ago, I found myself in Izmir, a beautiful city in southern Turkey.

At a lovely family-run restaurant, a fantastic meal could be had for just eight dollars. But Turkey had steep tariffs on imported wine to protect local wineries. If I wanted to indulge in imported wine, it would have added forty dollars to my bill—no thanks! So, I asked the waiter for a local alternative. He brought me a bottle of Turkish something-or-other that cost, and I’m not kidding, just four dollars. In that moment, with that food, it was delicious.

Here’s the thing: most people can’t tell a great wine from a mediocre one. If you pour the same wine into two identical glasses and tell the taster one bottle costs $100 and the other $12, they’ll almost always prefer the “more expensive” wine.

Baba Shiv, a professor of marketing at Stanford, conducted a study where he did just that. He had people taste the same wine, but told them one was expensive and the other was not. And here’s the kicker: the tasters were hooked up to an FMRI machine, which tracked their brain activity.

When they drank the supposedly expensive wine, the pleasure centers in their brains lit up, and it literally changed the way their mouths perceived the taste. They were “aroused” to prefer the expensive wine, even though it wasn’t any different!

This isn’t just a parlor trick—it's a real effect. Wild, right? But hey, it shows that marketing works. So, back to Chardonnay. You don’t have to spend a fortune to enjoy a good bottle as part of your Chardonnay Way lifestyle. My go-to favorite is a Coppola Chardonnay, which I can usually snag for around $12.

My go to Chardonnay!

I also like to mix it up a bit—literally. I often add a splash of sparkling water, like Pellegrino, to my glass in a 1:1 ratio (half wine, half bubbles). It lowers the alcohol content and, honestly, I just love the mouthfeel of the fizz. Plus, with that mix, a heavy buttery or oaky Chardonnay would be wasted on me! I’ll be posting weekly Chardonnay recommendations on this blog as I branch out from my beloved Coppola and try to expand my horizons. But remember: pick what works for you! Don’t feel pressured to splurge on a “better” Chardonnay. Price doesn’t always mean better taste.

If you want to learn more and also get great recommendations on varietals of Chardonnay, then sign up for my ebook in the space below.

Cheers!