Colombard white wine variety

Colombard is used to make blended and varietal white wines in many Australian wine regions.

Colombard is a white wine variety that is used extensively in the Charente region of South Western France, mainly for material to be distilled for Cognac, a role it shares with Ugni Blanc aka Trebbiano. See this Wine Map of France  to find where the Charente wine region is located.

But it has a wider role in South West France where it is often used for blended wines. It is also quite popular in California and South Africa. There is an unrelated rare Swiss white wine variety called Colombaud.

In Australia, Colombard is the fifth ranking white wine variety in terms of volume produced, but almost all of the wine is sold, mostly in blends, as generic or cask wine.

The attraction of varieties like Colombard is that they are capable of producing heavy crops of grapes. Under these conditions it is inevitable that the resulting wine will lack flavour and body.

The exception perhaps is Primo Estate in McLaren Vale whose La Biondina Colombard is highly regarded. This further reinforces the point that many varieties with a reputation for producing large volumes of ordinary wine, with care and skill in the vineyard and winery, can be capable of producing interesting wine.

Pancrat [GFDL or CC BY-SA 3.0], from Wikimedia Commons

Australian Producers of Colombard wine

• Campbells Wines Rutherglen
• First Drop Barossa Valley
• Massena Wines Barossa Valley
• Old Plains Adelaide Plains
• Patritti Wines McLaren Vale
• Peel Estate Peel
• Quattro Mano Barossa Valley
• Seppeltsfield Barossa Valley
• Smallfry Wines Barossa Valley
• Yarra Yering Yarra Valley

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