Klean Chardonnay
Klean Chardonnay
Chardonnay / Klean Low / 9%
A low calorie Chardonnay with full flavor! Only 85 calories per serving, it is an easy choice for wine lovers looking to make healthier drinking choices without sacrificing quality. Flavors of tropical fruit, green apple and hints of butter and oak. Live Klean, drink Klean!
When you are someone who enjoys drinking beer or wine but you are looking to clean up your diet and be a bit healthier, there are some obvious options that are available to you. You could quit drinking altogether and eliminate all of those extra calories that come with it. You could turn to something like non-alcoholic beer, which is improving as time goes on and typically contains far fewer calories than traditional beer. Or if you don’t want to give up the buzz altogether and you still want the health benefits that come from a glass of wine, you might want to pick up one of the many low-abv, low-calorie offerings on the market.
Klean is one of the more popular winemakers in this sphere. Like many others, they focus a lot of their efforts on white wine varietals that can be made healthier simply through a reduction in sugar content. I have previously sampled and reviewed their Pinot Grigio, Rose, and the one red they do offer, a Cabernet Sauvignon, with varying results. All that leaves me with is their Chardonnay. I picked up a bottle of their 2018 vintage, which, like all of their varieties, contains 85 calories per five-ounce serving and just nine percent alcohol by volume. Through this Klean Chardonnay review, I will do my best to let you know if this healthier wine option is worth keeping in your fridge.
Klean Chardonnay Review
I feel like a bit of a broken record with these Klean reviews because in each one of them I have pointed out how much I love their aesthetic. Fitting to the brand name, their label is simple and elegant, with the name running vertically down the front of the bottle in negative space that has been cut out of the label. This allows you to see the color of the wine through the name.
The only other info on the front of the bottle is the calorie count. The back of the label contains more of their impressive nutritional information, as well as some tasting note, which as a reviewer I do my best to ignore.
In the bottle, as well as poured into a glass, Klean Chardonnay is a crisp shade of gold. There are a few bubbles present on the pour that linger around the edges of the glass for a short time.
There is a lot of fruit forwardness immediately on the nose of this wine. I get a good amount of pear, perhaps intermingled with light notes of banana and green apple. Digging deeper, there are some nice notes of oak that come through and a little bit of vanilla.
There isn’t much sweetness to be found in the aroma, but I also don’t get a strong sense of dryness, so perhaps this one will fall somewhere down the middle. I don’t sense any other distinct characteristics on the nose, but the flavor profile seems like it will be rather bright and complex. Time to take a sip to find out if that’s the truth and answer the question, “Is Klean Chardonnay good?”
Is Klean Chardonnay Good?
The first thing that I noticed upon tasting is that there is a fair amount more tartness on the tongue than I sensed in the aroma. It comes through more as that green apple flavor rather than the tropical pear notes that were stronger on the nose.
There is even more complexity running underneath that fruit flavor. There is a buttery backbone that comes through not only in taste but also to a slightly lesser degree in mouthfeel. That mouthfeel is one of the better aspects of this wine, in my opinion. It’s wonderfully smooth and coats the tongue in delightfully chilled wetness.
Nothing stands out as particularly sweet nor dry. If push came to shove, I suppose I would describe it as semi-sweet, although what is most dominant is the tartness. There is very little acidity present. Much of the buttery feel and flavor lingers throughout the tasting experience and beyond. Personally, I am a fan of a sharper finish that sets up the next drink, but I wouldn’t go so far to call the finish on this unpleasant.
Underlying all of these flavors and various other characteristics is a subtle oak note that balances out the rest of the profile nicely.
Generally speaking, the tasting experience brought forward just any many flavor elements as I expected from the nose, but they weren’t exactly in line with each other. That is not inherently a good or bad thing, but everything works well together and results in a very drinkable wine. We’ll see what all of that means for my final Klean Chardonnay rating.
Klean Chardonnay Rating
I have been mostly pleased with all of the varietals that Klean offers up, and this Chardonnay wasn’t much different. None of them had much of a wow factor, but as far as affordable low-calorie wines go, there was never anything to be upset about. This wine, in particular, has plenty of character in every facet. Nearly all of it works well together, and all of the levels are balanced nicely. Still, there is nothing present to really vault it over the top.
Chardonnay isn’t exactly one of the varietals that I commonly turn to when I choose to indulge in white wine, but I could absolutely see myself sipping this over the course of a warm summer day. And the low abv and calorie count would make me feel much less guilty about doing so. While the complexity is there, I cannot quite bring myself to give this wine the highest of grades. So I will end this Klean Chardonnay review by awarding it 4 out of 5 stars. While there is a minor curve that needs to be taken into account when evaluating a low-calorie wine, I’ve sampled enough at this point to know that this one stands up there with some of the best. I doubt anyone will be disappointed if they decide to put their health first and pick up a bottle.
Photos Credit: https://www.totalwine.com/
