Editing Chardonnay (section)

==Popularity and backlash==
[[File:Chardonnay and Kir Royal.jpg|left|thumb|200px|Chardonnay has become a popular component in the wine-based [[cocktail]] [[Kir (cocktail)|Kir]]]]
Chardonnay long had a reputation as one of France's great white wines, but due to the dominance of geographical [[wine label|labeling]], the fact that Chardonnay was the grape behind white Burgundy was not widely known by the wine-drinking public. The success of California and new world Chardonnays, partly encouraged by the Californian showing at the [[Judgment of Paris (wine)|Judgment of Paris]] wine tasting, brought varietal wine labeling to more prominence and the easy to pronounce Chardonnay grape was one of the largest beneficiaries. In the late 1980s, a sort of "Chardonnay-mania" developed as wine regions (particularly new and developing ones) dramatically increased their planting of the grape to meet the worldwide demand.<ref name="Oxford pg 154-156"/>

As more vineyards responded with massive new plantings of the variety, they found that fashions were changing again. The market was drinking more red wine, and there was a backlash against heavy, oaky, New World Chardonnays in favor of lighter wines such as [[Pinot grigio]]. There was a new fashion, "ABC" – Anything But Chardonnay, identified by Frank Prial in 1995.<ref>{{Cite news |first=Frank J. |last=Prial |author-link=Frank J. Prial |title=Wine Talk |work=The New York Times |date= 1995-08-30 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1995/08/30/garden/wine-talk-465895.html}}</ref> Another reason for the backlash was that Chardonnay was seen as a symbol of the globalization of wine, in which local grape varieties were grubbed up in favor of the big names demanded by international markets. [[Oz Clarke]] described a view of Chardonnay as "the ruthless coloniser and destroyer of the world's vineyards and the world's palates."<ref>Clarke, 2001, Websters, p. 191.</ref> The criticism was centered on the habits of winemakers to pull out or give up on local varieties in order to plant more Chardonnay which offered potentially more income but lack the uniqueness and character of local varieties. Examples of this occurred in south Italy and Spain when ancient [[Negroamaro]], [[Primitivo]], [[Grenache]] and [[Mataro (grape)|Mataro]] vineyards were ripped up in favor of new Chardonnay plantings.<ref name="Clarke pg 63-73"/>

Chardonnay became very fashionable in the 1990s, as the stereotypical drink of young urban women of the [[Bridget Jones]] generation.{{citation needed|date=October 2024}}

By 2002, the association of Chardonnay with suburban, unsophisticated tastes was being explored in Australian TV show ''[[Kath & Kim]]'', where lower middle class characters mispronounce the varietal as "kardonnay".<ref>{{Cite web |last=Content |first=Deakin |date=2018-06-20 |title=Are you mispronouncing these common words? |url=https://this.deakin.edu.au/society/are-you-mispronouncing-these-common-words?utm_source=chatgpt.com |access-date=2025-02-03 |website=this. |language=en}}</ref>

Despite the backlash, Chardonnay remains very popular. In 2004, Chardonnay was estimated to be the world's 6th most widely grown grape variety, covering {{convert|179300|ha|acre}}.<ref>Robinson, 2006, p. 746, entry ''Vine varieties''.</ref>