Break The White Wine Code With These Three Simple Styles

Confused by all the white wine options at restaurants or the wine shop? Tired of ordering a glass of Chardonnay and never knowing if it’ll taste like lemon zest or buttery popcorn? On this episode of the Everyday Sommelier podcast, Kristi Mayfield breaks down the complicated world of white wine styles into three simple, easy-to-use categories that will help you always get the glass you want—whether you’re craving something fresh and zippy, aromatic and floral, or rich and creamy.

Kristi shares the insider wine tips that sommeliers use to decode wine lists, explains what to say to wine shop staff or servers to get the style you actually love, and reveals how knowing just three styles can totally transform your wine confidence. You’ll hear which grapes belong in each style (Pinot Grigio, Gewürztraminer, Chardonnay and more), understand why your favorite Sauvignon Blanc isn’t always the same, and pick up food pairing hacks to make weeknight dinners or special occasions shine.

Plus, Kristi dispels Chardonnay myths, clarifies tricky wine lingo, and gives you a toolkit for exploring new bottles stress-free. No more falling for the “ABC—Anything But Chardonnay” trap!

BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU’LL DISCOVER: • The 3 core white wine styles—Fresh & Crisp, Funky & Floral, Rich & Creamy—and what makes each unique
• How to communicate your ideal wine style in any store or restaurant with simple, sommelier-approved language
• Why not all Chardonnays taste the same and how to get the style you actually enjoy
• Food pairings for each white wine style so you never miss a match

Timestamps & Segment Titles (SEO Optimized):

00:00 – Why Your Chardonnay Never Tastes the Same Twice
00:04:18 – Skip Wine Snobbery: Three White Wine Styles Made Simple
00:05:58 – How to Find Crisp, Dry White Wines at Any Restaurant
00:07:52 – Funky & Floral: Unlocking Aromatic White Varieties
00:10:20 – Creamy, Buttery White Wines Explained—And How To Pair Them
00:14:59 – The One Wine List Trick Every Confident Drinker Needs

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Transcript

EP 4 | White Wine Type Transcript

Are you in the ABC club? Anything but Chardonnay? Totally understand. try one that's and it's crisp and it's it's your and perfect bottle of wine for that picnic you want to call it sunshine in a bottle, you're right there. But the next time you order a it's kind of more like being wrapped up in a cozy blanket next to fireplace watching a movie with a bucket of buttery popcorn.

The unpredictable styles of Chardonnay as well as many other white wines can be impossible to predict. You know that you want a specific style, you order pick the wrong one. Do you want the good news? Chardonnay or any white wine for that matter be broken down into three simple styles. So you can get exactly the one you every time you order. So keep listening. We're gonna let you in on a little insider secret to white wine styles.

In our house, I'm the make about 90 % of the purchasing decisions in order to keep our favorite wines stocked. Well, let's be fair, there's probably a few more of my favorites in the house than there are my husband's. While we share a lot of favorite styles, he is truly the self-proclaimed, I do not like Chardonnay guy. he thinks he's a full-fledged member of the, ABC club. 

Actually, the big alcohol Chardonnays that he's just not a fan of, not all Chardonnay is made in this style. So one of my favorite things to cook up a great meal, pop the cork on a cool climate, bright, fresh, crisp, sunshine in a bottle Chardonnay. Iserve him a glass and then inevitably as we're eating dinner, he's like, “Hey, I really love this wine. What is it?”

 And of course with my sweetest smile and my most polite voice, I tell a Chardonnay. So what style of white wine drinker are you? With so many options on wine menus, bottles on nearly impossible to pick the perfect wine. You probably know the style, the flavor, the experience you want from a bottle, you can kind of get tongue-tied trying to tell someone else what that is. And it's because your wine language that of your restaurant server, wine shop probably about as different as say speaking Portuguese versus speaking Korean, but it's not your fault. 

It's like giving the same abstract painting to two people for a few seconds, asking them, to look at it closely and then describe what they saw. And most likely going to get different answers. But if you gave those same two people a picture a car, a train, an apple, a bear, and ask them to tell what they saw in that image, they're going to give you the same answer because they're speaking the same language. 

Now wine is totally subjective, everybody smells differently, everybody tastes differently. So your language around wine is bound to be different than the next what can you do about Simplify and create a common language. when it comes to learning anything, simplification is your friend. When we go through school, we teach ourselves memorization tricks to pass our exams or things multiple times in order it into our memories.

And we can use these same tips and tricks to help us along our wine journey. Now, as a wine I find simplifying or categorizing wine concepts into threes can help you and other students learn without really being overwhelming. And we can apply that same principle to wine into styles, of course, three to be exact. And while this may seem oversimplified,

It works and it gives you a common language you can use in any wine situation. Whether you're ordering off a menu or you don't know any of the or you're asking your favorite wine merchant to help steer you to the perfect bottle. Okay, now what are these three magical categories? First and foremost, fresh and crisp. Second, funky and floral. And third, rich and creamy. 

But to leverage them, you're going to need a little more information and importantly, you're going to need to know which style of white wine love. Or at least the one you'd love to have in your glass at any given time, whether that's at dinner, for a special occasion, happy hour with your friends. 

So let's dive in to fresh and crisp. What describes or defines this particular style? So we can describe these wines as light and bright and zippy and fresh and dry, tart, spunky all of those types of terms but when you sip a fresh and crisp white wine your mouth is going to tingle and it's going to start to salivate because it has super bright and high acidity so think about a really tart lemonade in the summertime or that first bite of a really ripe green apple.

 Other features of these wines are typically low alcohol and zero, or nearly imperceptible really dry white wines. And because they're super light, they're not really going to have any overwhelming or overpowering aromas or flavors. And while I want to not necessarily call out specific fruit flavors, we've all bitten into that pear or that peach that was crunchy. It ripe. And it gave you full-on mouth pucker. 

You get the flavors, but that super bright acidity of the fruit is way more potent. So what varieties fall into the fresh and crisps category? Wines like Pinot Grigio, Gruner-Veltliner, Cool Climate Chenin Blanc, and Cool Climate Chardonnay all fall into this category. Plus others like Picpoul de Pinet from France and Melon de Bourgogne, many, many others. But my fair warning is this, these wines are super easy sippers or porch bounders. So don't that easy drinking nature get you into trouble because you drank too much or the whole bottle. 

When it comes to food pairings, fresh and crisp white wines are super food friendly. You can pair them with salads with vinegarettes, seafoods, appetizers, light pastas, chicken, veggies, foods that are delicious but not overpowering. So they're not going to overpower the wines. Now, all sounds good, right? But how do you know how to find them? Well, simply ask for it. 

Wherever you are, just describe the wine style that you want as I would love a fresh and crisp dry white wine. And whoever you're working with is going to know exactly how to steer you. So let's move on to funky and floral. You're now an expert on fresh and crisp, but if you want something a little more complex, a little more layered, maybe spicy with some florals and potpourri notes, even a little herbaceousness, things that are probably a little more difficult to pinpoint and describe, these are funky and floral wine styles. 

So to describe these or define these, I know you're thinking, wait, you just mentioned potpourri, you just mentioned florals, but hear me out here. In wine, funky has often been associated with wines that might be a little bit off or potentially even a little faulty. And that is not what we are describing here. You'll often hear the term aromatic when it comes to these wines. 

Quite candidly, I prefer to keep it a little bit more fun, so funky and But wine just have to taste like fruit. Many have flavors and aromas that wine experts would describe as florals, like orange blossom, rose, jasmine, or spices and herbs like ginger, nutmeg, tarragon, lemongrass, the list goes on and on. So think of these wines more like an exotic perfume or a freshly mowed lawn of grass. 

So while the fresh and crisp wines are more the funky and floral wines are going to be juicier because they're gonna be much riper. If you think about instead of what we just talked about, this is that uber ripe peach that you bite into. It's juicy and the juice just drips down your chin. And you think about the feeling in your mouth, that juice coats your entire mouth with all that luscious and sugar. Now, what varieties fall into this style of So let's start off talking about Sauvignon Blanc, but not your Cool climate Sauvignon Blanc. 

These are Sauvignon Blancs from warmer regions that get into those Gewurztraminer or Gewurz, Viognier, Riesling, wines from the Mascotte family, Tarantes, which is an Argentinian grape, Pinot Gris, which is actually the same grape as Pinot Grigio, but these are left on the vine later, so they're harvested later which gives them more complexity, more flavors, and of course it's going to be richer, riper, juicier. In Italy, you have Fiano, and there's many these style of wines. But again, it is a little bit more difficult this or style of wine. But talk to server wine shop merchant about a funky of floral white wines, it's going to get you going in the right direction.

Now with food, these wines are new best friend with spicy Asian foods and curries, Indian foods, even hearty rustic root vegetables, turkey, super food friendly. But because sometimes they do have a higher alcohol, you have to be careful if they get above that spicy food, might make the food taste even spicier. 

Let's move on to rich and creamy, the third style of white wine, which often is the result of wine making techniques or decisions that the winemaker makes in order to influence the overall style of the wine and flavors and aromas. let's define that. These wines are often oak fermented or oak aged. And this will create flavors and aromas of baking spices, vanillas, nutmegs, cinnamon, clove, even coconut and caramels. Because the interaction of the not only impart these flavors, it also creates a more complex and more full mouth in wines. 

Now, oak is not what makes this style of wine buttery. This happens by a conversion of really tart, again, think of that green a malic acid and it's converted into these creamy, buttery, lactic acids. You think about lactic or lactose or milk. So this is called or malolactic conversion. And even having a small percentage of the overall blend of the gone through this maleelectric conversion and having that little bit of creaminess, take a wine that's really tart and bright and acidic, so more like that lemonade, and it can turn it into a creamier, more like a lemon curd flavor, just like magic. So think of it as the rounder style of any white wine variety.

Now another influence is called lees and these are actually the dead yeast cells that result from the fermentation process. And they can be left in contact with the wine in the winemaking vessel for any period of time. And they complexity as well as if you think about yeast, used yeast to make bread. So these do impart toasty and bready flavors into the wines. And winemakers can stir it up periodically or frequently which will intensify the unique flavors that the leaves can give to the wine.

Overall, when grapes are grown in warmer clients or are harvested are gonna ripen to have a higher level of is ultimately going to translate to higher alcohol in the final Alcohol adds weightiness, especially to white wines. And a lot of these will have over a 14 alcohol level. Included in this style,Once again, Chardonnay. Chardonnay is the chameleon of white wines. So particularly if these come from warm climates, they can fall into this category. Others include Semillon, Roussanne, Marsanne, Chenin Blanc from warmer climates. An aged Rioja, which is a Sauvignon Blanc from Spain, also falls into this category. 

You can also include warm climate California Sauvignon Blanc that may be aged and create a richer, more complex style. You might've even heard of Blanc, which was coined by Robert Mondavi. This is the rich and creamy style and may have gone through some of the processes we talked about. 

 But wines like Viognier, when it's a warm climate, they have rich and creamy characteristic naturally and winemakers don't have to use some of these other influences to create that rich and creamy style. 

Now let's talk about the perfect pairings for rich and creamy white wines? Well, of course, creamy foods, fettuccine Alfredo, creamy soups, risottos, salmon because it has a higher level of fat and is really rich, roasted chicken, a lot of divine pairings with rich and creamy white wines. 

I want to make a special note here that in the past, buttery, oaky, California Chardonnay was kind of massive, it was almost too much. But I think many in the wine industry would agree that this is a thing of the past. in general, a buttery oaky chardonnay is an extremely popular style and it should be, they're delicious. But winemakers have taken foot off the gas here and they're being a little more subtle in these influences. So they're creating a more balanced quite candidly more drinkable overall.

Bottom line, you now know the three white wine styles, but one, keep it simple. This can liberate you from trying to needle in a in the world of thousands of wines. And two, create and use this common language in the way you're describing wine, because you're now liberated from thinking that you don't have the skills to pick that perfect wine because you do.

The most difficult decision you now have is which of these styles you want in your glass right now. But by using these three categories or styles of white wine, you're now able order or buy a white wine that fits into whichever category you're craving at any and every wine experience. You can now try new wines from whichever category. Experiment, get daring, try a wine you've never heard of.

Find your next favorite bottle of wine. We've given you a few to try, but there's so many more. And finally, this will create a great conversation and experience with your server, your sommelier, your wine merchant, because they are now going to know how to steer you whichever of these styles you're looking for on their wine list or on the shelves of their store. 

But most of all, have fun with it and enjoy this new wine skill. And if you want more tips and tricks to liberate that inner wine enthusiast within you, our Everyday Sommelier Wine Pod community on Facebook is the the perfect place for you to learn, share, explore, and of course, make new wine friends. Most importantly, this is a community of no judgment allowed. So scroll down into the show notes and join us today.

And as your Everyday Somalia podcast host, I am thrilled to share that we're launching some new classes and events because we know you wanna keep learning wine your way. So get on our insider list for updates and notifications about these classes and about these events by signing up on our website at stay in the know. 

And if you haven't already, click on that follow button because on the next episode, we're going to be breaking down three styles of red wine. And it's one we know you're wanna catch. And so are your wine-loving friends. So don't keep this podcast a Share everyday with them today. 

It's a great day to select your favorite wine sit back with your favorite glass of wine and learn wine your way!