Grand Vin de Hauteville oak-aged Chardonnay

It is 1996 and the maiden 1995 vintage of the Grand Vin de Hauteville oak-aged pair of Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon varietal wines is ready to be released on the Maltese market – with great fanfare and, as history would have it, with huge success for the Delicata winery.

Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon are still queen and king of the world of wine. And, in the 1990s, the winemaking trend for premium wines is to produce increasingly bolder, fruitier wines that are deep in colour with generally very noticeable tannin and woody flavours derived from the use of smallish new oak barrels.

New World wine producing countries California and Australia are the ones propelling this fad. On the Maltese wine scene, too, wines from noble varieties are gaining traction with discerning wine drinkers at the end of the 20th century. And it is Delicata, always the pioneering winery, who first forges a path for oak-aged Chardonnay made in a never-tried-before style.

Fast forward 22 years and here I am busy tasting a glass of one of the very few remaining bottles of the first 1995 vintage (taken from a long-forgotten case I coincidentally stumbled upon the other day). It makes me truly realise how distinct the Grand Vin de Hauteville Chardonnay really was for its time.

Of course, this bottle of dry white wine should have been uncorked ages ago and, as expected, it shows signs of oxidation (a natural process that eventually spoils wine that has been stored for too long).

But while two decades of unfair bottle ageing have made the bright fruit fade and the once golden hued colour turn orangey, the hallmark that made this wine at its inception so unique, groundbreaking and loved is still very obvious. The overtly woody scents and flavours of toasty vanilla, caramel and butterscotch are still omnipresent in the glass.

In retrospect, the creation of the very first 1995 vintage of the Grand Vin de Hauteville Chardonnay and also the Cabernet Sauvignon is clearly a testimonial to the fashion and love for oak of the late 20th century.

Wineries everywhere tried to add cachet, depth and value to their wines by ageing them in barriques. A top-quality oak barrel, with its oak flavours leeching into the wine and capable of making the wine clear and stable in a natural way, was widely regarded as the X-factor in winemaking.

However, for every action there is an opposite reaction and lately we are seeing increasing appreciation for lighter, fresher white wines and bottles that may not be chock-full of oaky flavours but which are expressive of the vineyard rather than cellar tools.

The early vintages of the Grand Vin de Hauteville oak-aged Chardonnay were exceptionally wooded, a novelty appreciated and praised by many wine lovers. Meanwhile, though, consumer preferences have changed and the Delicata winery has judiciously scaled back and skilfully integrated the oakiness in line with today’s preferences.

Words such as ‘fresh’, ‘delicate’ and ‘mineral’ are now more befitting wine tasting notes for the latest vintages of Malta’s Grand Vin de Hauteville Chardonnay. The softness and depth of palate is achieved as before by leaving the wine in contact with high-quality new French oak, albeit for a shorter period of time, while the lees get stirred a lot more.

Like many of the most admired wines today, the Grand Vin de Hauteville varietals are no longer exactly the same heavy 1990s archetypes built on severe oak maturation.

Other minor packaging changes have been made too. A lighter and slightly shorter though similarly shaped bottle has replaced the original one which was heavy to handle and too tall to put upright in a domestic fridge. The quality of the natural cork got upgraded and the print detail of the iconic label is now even more attractive.

In recent years, an unoaked Viognier, a sweet Moscato and a barrel-matured blend of Shiraz and Cabernet Sauvignon have been added to the DOK Malta Grand Vin de Hauteville range which has since earned the reputation of Malta’s most-awarded wine brand.