Its adaptability to different soils and climates, and malleability in the wine room make Chardonnay one of the most popular and ubiquitous grapes. Responsible for some of the world’s most thrilling white wines wines including Champagne, it is in its homeland of Burgundy with villages such as Chablis, Meursault and Puligny-Montrachet that producers craft arguably some of the world’s finest wines. Chardonnay is also synonymous with California, where it can display riper, tropical fruit flavors, rather than the more restrained stone fruit and steely, mineral qualities often associated with its Old World and cool climate counterparts. While there are terrific fresh and vibrant Chardonnays made solely using stainless steel, the grape also knits terrifically well with oak, lending greater depth and weight in the form of a nutty, toasty and somtimes buttery component.
Jura Wine Jura is a small wine region in eastern France which is responsible for some traditional and highly idiosyncratic wine styles. It is close to, but quite distinct from the Swiss Jura. Sandwiched between Burgundy in the west and Switzerland in the east, the region is characterized by a landscape of wooded hillsides and the twisting topography of the Jura Mountains. Jura's vineyards cover just over 4570 acres (1850ha), forming a narrow strip of land measuring nearly 50 miles (80km) from north to south. The total acreage is steadily increasing, but still represents less than one-tenth of the area under vine here two centuries ago, before phylloxera decimated the region's vineyards. Jura's wines are sold under five core appellations, the most quantitatively important of which are Arbois and Cotes du Jura.
Arbois is a town in the north of the Jura region of eastern France. The wine capital of Jura, it gives its name to the region's most-prolific appellation for red, white and rose wines – a title which also covers Jura's famous vin jaune and vin de paille. The Arbois appellation was introduced in 1936 and covers 13 communes on the hills and valley slopes surrounding the town. One of these, a small village named Pupillin, is particularly known for the quality of its wines, which come from a patchwork of vineyards planted on south-facing, limestone-rich slopes. Wines from these sites are sold as Arbois-Pupillin.
White wine is a wine whose color can be pale-yellow, yellow-green, and yellow-gold colored. The wine is produced from a variety of grape varieties. The flavor and color comes from the juice of the grape and sometimes the skin of the grape as well. Interestingly, not all white wine comes from white grapes. Some select red grapes are used as in Champagne.
