You might not be aware that there is a village named Chardonnay in France, set in a notch between gently swooping hills covered in vine rows. Years ago I drove through it and, if I remember right, it took about 40 seconds. It’s astonishing how this tiny village shares its name with the most ubiquitous white wine on the planet.

Chardonnay might be the most omnipresent white wine variety on earth, but it’s also one that many people love to hate. So go ahead and hate all you want, but you should realize you can easily avoid the style for which it is reviled—it’s reserved for the bottom shelf at your local supermarket (anyone for a bottle of “Butter”?). Meanwhile, thoughtfully made Chardonnay is experiencing a global renaissance, and the range of expressions and the creativity they show is more thrilling now than it’s been in half a century.

Chardonnay the ville is in the Macon in southern Burgundy, and Macon Chardonnay can serve as a useful baseline for the grape’s essential character. It is, after all, an inherently neutral variety that is malleable as clay, and like clay it can be built up into gorgeous, graceful, transcendent constructions—which is why so many winemakers love it. Unadorned, it can be charming and lively, not especially complex but pure and crystalline, especially when grown in the right place.

Joseph Drouhin’s Macon-Villages ($20) is a fine introduction. A large Burgundy producer-negotiant based in Beaune, Drouhin is a proven Chardonnay master, responsible for superb expressions from Chablis to Dundee (Oregon). This Chardonnay is aged mostly in stainless steel tanks; once you remove the prop of oak, the wine’s fruit spectrum appears in generous scents of apple and pear, sometimes citrus and peach, with flavors to match that are adorned with traces of nutty lees or honeycomb. Above all, the wine should be lively with acidity, and the texture should be mouthwatering, tense, fresh, and lifted. If it sags or it’s cloying or blowsy, move on.

Domestically there are many un-oaked versions. Two of the most reliable for me are the “Inox” (steel) bottlings from Melville in Santa Barbara County ($50), and Chehalem in Oregon ($25).

Thereafter, the permutations and possibilities are boundless. How ripe do you want your wine? In some places Chardonnay will only get so ripe; in other places you need to guard against too much ripeness. Once harvested, the wines can be aged in steel, concrete eggs, oak barrels, large oak barrels, amphorae, or any combination.

The wines can go through a secondary, malolactic fermentation (most do) which sometimes accounts for flavors (or sensations) of butter or cream. Sometimes the skins are left in the tank to steep like tea for some added heft; sometimes, for the same reason, the wine remains in contact with the dead yeast (lees) which lends it a toasty, nutty flavor. If the wine comes into contact with oxygen, depending on how long it will also affect flavors and textures. Finally, how long it’s aged will influence the character.

All of these tools are at a winemaker’s disposal, a Rubik’s Cube level of elaboration. In a range of expressions as vast as this one, how do we narrow down our parameters as to what makes a great Chardonnay? Well, here are a few rules of thumb.

A great Chardonnay must have something to say about place.

This inherently neutral grape is like a lens through which a region’s conditions can be observed—which is, I might add, one of the thrills of drinking, loving, and collecting wine in the first place. That is why there are crus in Burgundy, and why some wines are Grand Crus, some wines are Premier Crus, some wines are merely ordinaire.

Being on the edge of where a variety can ripen can also make for thrilling statements about place—Chablis, for example, the thrilling, chalky, green and bracing Chardonnays from the north of Burgundy, can only come from one place. In fact, it’s so distinct it’s become a comely adjective—chablisienne—to describe wines not made in Chablis. No one would use that word for Meursault, where a warmer climate conveys a fleshiness Chablis cannot often attain.

Warm sites too have their unique imprint and result in distinctive, sumptuous profiles. David Ramey makes unbelievably delicious California Chardonnays that are generous but never over the top for his eponymous brand ($85). Elsewhere Kumeu River ($75) in the Auckland suburbs of New Zealand, and Leeuwin Estate’s Art Series in Margaret River, Australia ($80) produce arguably two of the southern hemisphere’s greatest Chardonnays that are sumptuous, golden, irresistibly sensuous wines.

A great Chardonnay should show intention.

There are plenty of Chardonnays in the market that are there to be thrown down at lunch or uncorked over a Wednesday night chicken dinner. They are simple and fruit-forward with a lipsmacking briskness—and then poof, they’re gone, and you’re on to something else.

But a great Chardonnay will have layers, stages, length. It will move across the palate and finish with energy, it will take you somewhere, it alternates flavors and has textural complexity. That layering, that journey is what separates the great from the ordinary. And it’s rare, but you’ll find it in the wines of Raveneau, Leflaive and Coche-Dury, the pinnacles of French Chardonnay’s expression. Uncork a wine from these esteemed producers and you can learn the variety’s mysteries at great expense, or perhaps more affordably with a Puligny-Montrachet from Paul Pernot ($99). There’s a corollary to the above dictum, and that’s this:

A great Chardonnay should show some reticence.

Tasting great Chardonnay can sometimes come with a pang of regret. Great wines unfurl over time, they live and breathe, they change in the glass and the bottle, and inevitably they lead to thoughts about its future. If you can muster the discipline, leave a good wine open for a few days and see where it goes. If it opens and gets better, that’s usually a sign it will benefit from aging, and an invitation to lay down the rest.

Two California Chardonnay producers to consider: Au Bon Climat, helmed by the late Jim Clendenon, always made Chardonnays geared toward the future. You can choose from several, but Nuits Blanches au Bouge ($50) is a great place to start. Clendenon’s protégé, Gavin Chanin, also builds his Chardonnays to age—his Chardonnay bottling from Los Alamos Vineyard ($65) is tightly constructed in a complex weave, built to uncoil for years.

Chardonnay for Weirdos

As we’ve seen, Chardonnay’s inherent neutrality and structure makes it a wine to build upon. Some of those bottlings are more artistic, or idiosyncratic, or personal than others. In the Cotes de Jura, for example, you can find Chardonnays that have been aged for many years in old oak barrels. Even if they’re not made with the oxidized sous voile method (that’s usually reserved for the Savagnin variety), the wines often seem exotic and savory.

I’m going to close with three wines from Oregon. When I talk about a renaissance in Chardonnay, in this country at least, I’m thinking about the Willamette Valley, a place that seems to have recovered its mojo after decades of patchy efforts with the variety (owing more to poorly-selected clones than a lack of technique). The first is The Eyrie, one of the region’s first wineries to plant and make Chardonnay. Founder David Lett and his heir, Jason, have maintained a style that feels deeply personal and idiosyncratic ($50). Jason Lett has said that while he’s kept his father’s deeply traditional winemaking ways, he’s cleaned them up a bit. It’s always a wine that combines a mushroomy earthiness and boundless core of fruit that feels one of a kind.

For sheer grandeur, look to Josh Bergström’s tête de cuvee, Sigrid ($125), an amalgam of estate fruit sources that is an annual barrel selection of extraordinary complexity and pedigree. Winemaker Josh Bergström privileges fruit on some days and a flinty minerality on others, all wrapped in nutty lees and a gorgeous, lusty, honeyed texture. It is among the most layered wines I tasted all year, with a length that’s fulsome and exhilarating—and a wine to cellar.

Finally there’s a Chardonnay bottling from a winery outfit called Golden Cluster, the brainchild of winemaker Jeff Vejr. For his label On Wine Hill, he makes a bottling called Millerandage (Clone 548) ($35). That word refers to a phenomenon known as hens and chicks where some berries in a grape cluster ripen fully and some lag, remaining small and green. The latter leaves an inimitable and one-of-a-kind spice, cutting against the fruit but somehow giving it definition and a weirdly discordant energy.