One grape, two poles. In Chablis, Chardonnay grows on Kimmeridgian marl seamed with fossil oysters and comes out saline, green-gold and steel-straight, usually unoaked; on the Côte de Beaune it ferments and matures in barrel into the broad, hazelnut-and-butter manner the world has copied everywhere. Above Puligny and Chassagne, the little hill of Montrachet remains the dry white by which all others are measured.
Every ambitious Chardonnay on earth — Californian, Australian, South African — is in conversation with these slopes. Burgundy's answer is not power but place: the same grape, a footpath apart, saying two different things.