butter

It does pretty much apply to chardonnay. The butter note comes from a chemical called Diacetyl which is actually the aroma component of butter and is a side effect of malolactic fermentation in low acid wines (which many California chardonnay's are). It's opposite would be something sharper like Granny Smith apple or citrus. Your local wine merchant can best direct you to big buttery chardonnay.

Exactly. Malolactic fermentation is used to lower perceived acidity, by converting malic (apple tartness) acids to lactic ones. If the wine comes from a hot climate (CA chard) or from low acidity grapes and is lacking in acidity, malolactic fermentation should be blocked to preserve what little zing the wine has.

Though I've had pinot gris (from California and maybe from Oregon) that had some of this characteristic, due presumably also to malolactic fermentation.

I haven't had them twice.

To my taste (and smell), I always think that it's more like butterscotch than butter.

They say "bonbon" here...

Hmmm... I've certainly run into wines that smelled of butterscotch, but I've attributed it to the smell of new oak after a years of age.

Mark Lipton

Rich, As others have already pointed out, the buttery smells of certain California Chardonnays in particular arises from the presence of diacetyl, which is also the compound used to make microwave popcorn smell buttery. Any year of Kendall-Jackson "Vintner's Reserve" Chardonnay will give you that smell. Most any other California Chardonnay will, too, for that matter.

Mark Lipton

I am far from convinced I can tell the difference between the Diacetyl of malo and the caramel flavours you can get from oak. I suspect they are often present in the same wine anyway

Malolactic fermentation is sometimes used in red wine making also - to soften acid character though, rather than to create buttery aspects.

Seinfeld fans may recall that Jerry prefers the artificial diacetyl butter taste in cinema popcorn to the taste of real butter in popcorn.

Martin

To me the smell of new American Oak is sharper than the buttery smell of malolactic which to me is creamy in nature. Too much of either one turns me off to the wines anyway.