Chuck Ortman's remarkable 30-year career parallels the modern day expansion of California's fine wine industry – from its formative period in the late 1960s to its present heyday. During this time frame, the Ortman style evolved right along with the state's wine reputation.

"Mr. Chardonnay," a sobriquet bestowed on the jovial Ortman in 1990 by wine writer Per Henrik Mansson, seems an unlikely title for a man who in the mid-1960s was pursuing a degree in graphic arts at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland. It was then that a longtime friend introduced Ortman to a wine he'd made in his mother's basement. To say that the home-crafted nectar piqued the art student's interest is an understatement. The wine bug bit Ortman hard, and he found himself irresistibly drawn to the winemaking profession.

The year was 1968, a time when the nascent wine business was still struggling to recover from the lingering effects of Prohibition, and a fortuitous time for an aspiring winemaker to get involved. There was nowhere to go but up.

And so it came to pass – much to his parents' chagrin – that the affable and optimistic Ortman moved his wife and young daughter to the Napa Valley and took an entry-level job pulling hoses for Joe Heitz at Heitz Wine Cellars. Although the work was rudimentary, getting his feet wet at this legendary winery would prove to be an auspicious beginning.

As the wine industry grew through the last years of the decade and began to burgeon in the early 1970s, Ortman's talent asserted itself, and he soon was making wine. In 1971, he signed on at Spring Mountain Vineyards in St. Helena and began to experiment with his beloved chardonnay.

Why chardonnay? It wasn't as if a burst of clear light set him on his journey, just the basic realization that this was the right place to grow the grape.

"The thing I saw early on about chardonnay was simply that we had consistently ripe fruit in California, as opposed to Burgundy, where ripening is more inconsistent and depends on the weather," Ortman explains. "I wanted to enhance that ripe fruit – to let California Chardonnay speak for itself. So I started experimenting with techniques that would do that.

"At that time," he recalls, "most California Chardonnay was made in large, stainless steel tanks and racked pretty quickly off the lees." The technique produced a clean, fruity – if simple – Chardonnay.

In Burgundy, however, chardonnay was fermented in oak barrels and allowed to sit on the lees for many months – even for up to a year. This technique produced wines with layers of complexity imparted by the oak and by the disintegrating yeast cells that make up the lees. Ortman was convinced that the added complexity made up in part for the Burgundian Chardonnay's sparsity of fruit flavors.

"I didn't want to just copy the French," he asserts. "We have riper fruit here, and I wanted to capture that ripe fruit, but I also wanted to achieve some of the complexities they were attaining in Burgundy."

He resolved to use both techniques sequentially. "When the ripe fruit came into the winery, we augered it directly to the press and pumped the juice into large, stainless steel tanks. These tanks were in cool rooms, and the coolness helped slow the fermentations and preserve the fine, fruity flavors of the grapes," he explains.

Ortman fermented the must down to about 14 degrees Brix, and then pumped it into small French oak barrels to finish fermenting. "I'd let it ferment to dryness and let the gross lees settle in the barrels, then rack it. The cloudy wine would go back in the barrels, and the fine lees would settle out over time. I let the wine age on these lighter lees. Back then, when I was at Spring Mountain, I wouldn't stir them up." The combination of initiating fermentation in stainless steel and completing it in oak produced the result he was after: lots of fruit and layers of complexity.

Ortman's multifaceted Chardonnays were soon noticed by his peers, and others began seeking his advice.

"They say timing is everything," Ortman says, "and I felt it was time to leave Spring Mountain and become a consultant. A lot of new wineries were springing up, and I had my own philosophy about consulting. Instead of just telling winemakers what to do, I'd show them hands on, racking, pressing, analyzing wines with them until 3 in the morning sometimes. The greatest satisfaction I've had in my career was making that move to my own consulting firm."

And so, during the first 20 years of his career, he consulted or worked for Cain Cellars, Far Niente, Fisher, Heitz, Keenan, Shafer, Spring Mountain, St. Andrew's and St. Clement wineries.

During the mid-1980s, Ortman made further refinements to his Chardonnay style. He found that by occasionally giving those light lees a stir with a stick, he could increase the creaminess of the finished Chardonnay. But the stirring isn't done by an appointed schedule. It's a discretionary decision he makes with every individual barrel of wine. "I don't do it every time," he says. "I taste the wine and stir if I think it needs a little more creaminess. That's where the creativity comes in." He doesn't stir the lees too hard or often, either. "If the lees are stirred up too much, the wine gets gritty and dirty-tasting."

He makes an analogy with sparkling wine when it's en tirage. "Sparkling winemakers riddle their bottles to get the yeast down into the neck," he says, "but each time the bottle is riddled, the yeast gets stirred a little. Before riddling, the wine is tart, even sour, but riddling gives it a creaminess."

Stirring the lees in a barrel of chardonnay also brings up tiny bubbles of carbon dioxide. Some of this gas dissolves in the wine, making it a bit more acidic. The more acidic a wine, the less sulfite is needed to preserve and protect that wine, and that allows Ortman to use less sulfite during barrel aging.

In 1979, he started his own small "Charles Ortman" label with a Chardonnay made with fruit from the Edna Valley region near San Luis Obispo on the Central Coast of California. "The quality level of the grapes from Edna Valley was exciting," he recalls, "and I was thrilled with the resulting wine."

Although the next few vintages of Chardonnay were made from Napa Valley fruit, from that point on, Ortman always had the Central Coast in the back of his mind.

In 1984, his eponymous label was changed to Meridian when Ortman's wife, Sue, came up with the name. She chose it, she says "partly for Chuck's love of sailing, but primarily because it means the achievement of an ideal. It seemed the perfect name."

It was time for lightning to strike.

In 1988, the Estrella River Winery, on the east side of Paso Robles, came up for sale and was purchased by Wine World Estates (now Beringer Wine Estates). With his talents widely recognized, Ortman was tapped by Wine World to be the winemaker at its new Paso Robles facility. He brought not only his enthusiasm and considerable winemaking skill, but also the name Meridian to the new venture. Wine World revamped the existing facility, the Ortmans relocated to nearby San Luis Obispo, and the new incarnation of Meridian Vineyards was on its way. Ortman made his first wines at the new Meridian facility in 1988, and they included Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir and Syrah.

The winery is situated in a gorgeous stone building that surmounts a hill on the plains east of the town of Paso Robles. Its long driveway meanders through what seems to be an ocean of vines that surround the winery and stretch away to the horizon. But this warm Paso Robles vineyard is devoted primarily to cabernet sauvignon, merlot and syrah. The chardonnay is grown in cooler Region I and II vineyards much closer to the ocean, 30 miles away.

The workhorse of the Meridian Chardonnay line is its Santa Barbara bottling ($10) a light but lively wine with hints of tropical fruit essences and a crisp finish. It is comprised of fruit from three coastal vineyards in Santa Barbara County: 52 percent from the sandy White Hills Vineyard, 30 percent from the Riverbench Vineyard in the Santa Maria Valley and 18 percent from the limestone and sandstone soils of the Cat Canyon Vineyard. "The soil is well-drained former ocean bottom, so it's poor nutritionally," Ortman explains, adding that poor soils make for good wines because the berries stay small and intense. "A 20-year-old chardonnay vine in Santa Barbara County might be only 2 inches in diameter."

Meridian's Edna Valley Reserve Chardonnay, a bargain at $16, comes from two vineyards in that appellation: 75 percent from the Davenport Creek Vineyard and 25 percent from the Paragon Vineyard. Edna Valley is a very cool region with recurrent fogs that carry moisture into the vineyards, with a resulting risk of rot and mildew. So trellising here is used to keep shoots upright and open to the air, and to let the fruit hang in the sunlight below the leaves. "We will pull off leaves when necessary to make sure the fruit gets good sun exposure," Ortman says.

The Santa Barbara Chardonnay is about 90 percent barrel fermented with about 20 percent new French oak each year, and from 80 to 85 percent is put through malolactic fermentation, which softens its sharp acids. The Edna Valley Reserve is 100 percent barrel fermented in 70 percent new French oak and 30 percent 1-year-old oak barrels, and from 85 to 90 percent is put through malolactic fermentation. Ortman uses barrels from eight to ten French cooperages, or tonnellerie, because each firm's barrels are different and add a different nuance to the wine.

But what about Ortman's adherence to an initial fermentation in stainless steel?

"The fruit flavors of Napa and Sonoma Chardonnays are more citrusy – like lemons and grapefruit – with apple flavors," he explains. "Down here, the Central Coast flavors tend to be more tropical – honeydew melons, ripe peaches and nectarines, ripe pears and pineapple. These are richer and rounder flavors. If I would ferment Central Coast fruit in stainless, I'd get too much tropical flavor, like Hawaiian punch. I ferment in barrels here to help volatilize the flavors and keep them subdued."

How does he judge when to best pick the fruit? "My rule is to taste the berries and go by flavor first," he says. "Don Ackerman, our viticulturist here in Paso Robles, Bob Steinhauer, vice president of vineyard operations, and I go through the vineyards and taste. I might find some grapes that are too citrusy. One of the others might call out, 'I'm getting a lot of pineapple now.' When we taste the ripe grapes that exhibit the mature flavors of this terroir, only then do we look at the sugar and acid levels. Then we know when to pick."

The Edna Valley Reserve Chardonnay spends ten months on the lees and is stirred twice a month. One taste reveals Ortman's recipe for Chardonnay: Pack it as full of good ripe flavor as possible. Despite the big production levels, this is a Chardonnay that brims with complexity – oak nuances, a satiny-smooth texture, the creamy-custardy flavors that come from disintegrating yeast cells, and the lovely ripe peach and sunny stone fruit flavors that extend from the entrance through the middle and down the long, long finish.

While Chardonnay is his forte, Ortman also dotes on Burgundy's temperamental red grape. "The Pinot Noirs we're getting now are great!" he exclaims. "From 1988 to 1994, the Central Coast Pinots showed bright cherry and red fruit flavors, but now we're getting more body, flavor, extraction and black fruit character." Ortman attributes the improvements to fine-tuning techniques in the vineyard such as more leaf pulling and getting more light to the clusters.

Pushing 60 with no immediate plans for retirement, Ortman intends to harness the potential he sees in both his Syrah and Zinfandel to produce truly exceptional interpretations of both varietals in the next millennium.

Asked if he still dabbles in art, Ortman jokes that he turns to his paint brushes only at crush time to alleviate tension. On a more serious note, he confides that "The art is in the glass – my creative talents go into the wine." ¶

Contributing Editor Jeff Cox is the author of From Vines to Wines and is also the host of "Grow It!" on the Home & Garden TV Network.