(Wine-Searcher) - While Pinot is super-popular, W. Blake Gray asks why California Chardonnay just can't get no respect?

In Burgundy, Pinot Noir and Chardonnay are grown in many of the same villages and are nearly equally revered. But in California, there's no relationship between their reputations.

Chardonnay is California's most planted grape and not coincidentally its most popular varietal wine. But its reputation with wine lovers has plummeted over the last 20 years, even though total sales continue to rise. California Chardonnay doesn't get the respect or prices fetched by the state's Pinot Noir and doesn't seem to appeal to the same audience.

"I made Chardonnays in the '80s and '90s that were more expensive than these wines on the table," Au Bon Climat owner/winemaker Jim Clendenen said last week.

Clendenen was speaking as a panelist at the International Chardonnay Symposium, California's only event focused on Chardonnay. Pinot Noir lovers can choose from Pinot Fest, Pinot Days, the Pinot Noir Summit, World of Pinot Noir, Pinot Paradise, Pinot on the River, Anderson Valley Pinot Noir Festival and the Russian River Valley Pinot Classic, and I may have missed some (please don't email me). They can fly up to Oregon for the International Pinot Noir Celebration.

Chardonnay lovers have this one event based in Pismo Beach, and it wasn't even particularly well-attended. Did I mention that there's more than twice as much Chardonnay planted in California as Pinot Noir?

I also believe, as does Clendenen, that top quality California Chardonnay has never been better. California had very little Chardonnay until 1980, when a planting boom started. By 1988 California had more Chardonnay than France. But wineries were unsure what to do with the grape.

"In the first third of my career, Napa was making the 'food wines'," Clendenen told Wine-Searcher. "They were picked too early. ML [malolactic fermentation] was suppressed. They didn't have flavor. They were bad wines. Then they went the other way, to 16 percent alcohol. Oak barrels, malolactic, lees contact – all the things you've learned to love in Chardonnay have been exaggerations in California. That's when [critic Robert] Parker anointed Kistler as the best Chardonnay around. I don't know how you can drink that."

My own theory is that Chardonnay gained its huge US fan base because of the oaky, buttery, slightly sweet style. Kendall-Jackson Vintners Reserve Chardonnay, originally the accidental result of a stuck fermentation, became one of the most popular wines in America. But this is not a broad base of wine lovers. In the US, there are Chardonnay fans, and there are enophiles, with almost no crossover between them.

Meanwhile, Pinot Noir didn't take off in the U.S. until "Sideways" was released in 2004. Before that many Americans hadn't even tasted a Pinot, but Pinot specialist wineries had considerably more experience with the grape than Chardonnay makers had in the '80s and '90s. California Pinot's awkward period happened without the nation paying attention, and its emergence came perfectly timed for several helpful trends: a surge in enophilia, the growth in influence of sommeliers, and a backlash in some quarters against overly powerful Cabernets.