Another unoaked Chardonnay that is sure to please the masses, Chardonnay drinker or not. Most of the time when someone does not like Chardonnay, they don’t enjoy the heavy, overly oaked, super buttery style of Chardonnay. Louis Jadot is on the whole other end of the spectrum of Chardonnay since it uses zero oak. Louis Henry Denis Jadot founded Maison Louis Jadot as a negociant (wine merchant) house in 1859, but he quickly began acquiring some of Burgundy’s premier vineyards. His son and grandson, both also named Louis, expanded the company’s holdings and its marketing over the decades. After World War II, Louis Auguste Jadot’s export sales got a big push into the U.S. and Great Britain with the help of importer Rudy Kopf, the founder of the New York-based Kobrand Corp.
After Louis Auguste’s premature death in 1962, his assistant, Andre Gagey, took over the management of the Jadot family-owned winery. He hired Jacques Lardiere, one of Europe’s most renowned winemakers who remained with the company for more than 40 years. Gagey also hired his son Pierre-Henry Gagey in 1984. He succeeded his father and still runs Maison Louis Jadot, which last year produced 850,000 cases of wine from its 582 acres of Burgundy vineyards. The grapes used to produce this Louis Jadot Chardonnay are grown in the Macon-Villages region, an area made up of different communities of the Macon district in southern Burgundy. The designation connotes a step-up in quality from just Macon, according to Jancis Robinson in The Oxford Companion to Wine. This Chardonnay is extremely versatile with poultry and white meat, shellfish, grilled tuna, salads, or even on its own to sip on the patio in the hot summer months.