Chardonnay

This is currently the most widely consumed and grown white grape variety in the country. It is very important to the Australian wine industry for both domestic consumption and the export market. It is a most likeable wine, achieving good ripeness and rich levels, and the ability to be manipulated by vintners to achieve many different results. However, it is not the only wine on the market — a surprise to some people — and it can be very difficult to match well with some foods, especially foods with hot, spicy, pungent flavours. Using chardonnay as the example of a ‘food wine’ (a wine best consumed with food, as opposed to a wine best quaffed or drunk by itself), many wine critics and writers have stated that ‘spicy food and wine simply do not go’. Hopefully, by the time you have read this section I will have proved that theory wrong, but I guess the test is in the tasting, so try for yourself. Remember, I am giving you my personal preferences — not a blueprint for what is absolutely correct or not!