Why Chardonnay is the world’s greatest white wine grape - Wine + Champagne

Jul 24, 2025

Chardonnay sits rightfully at the top of the white grape list. It’s the top dog, the boss, the icon, the ultimate chameleon and confidently walks through the pantheon of vinous history.

And if you think otherwise, let’s be honest – you haven’t tried enough of it. It is the most articulate grape in the white wine universe. There is no better mirror for terroir. No better interpreter of human touch.

It is the one. The classic. The cult hero and the crowd pleaser. The quiet genius and the big-stage diva. It’s not just great – it’s the greatest.

The many guises of chardonnay

This wine wears many outfits. That’s part of its power. It does the ultimate in vinous shapeshifting and takes on so many personalities and styles. Chardonnay thrives in its contradictions. It can be indulgent and austere. Rich yet restrained. Loud but articulate. It’s the jazz musician of white grapes – freeform, intuitive, virtuosic.

Chardonnay grapes are a blank canvas that isn’t blank at all – they’re loaded with latent possibility. Taking on the influence of winemaking is one of chardonnay’s greatest assets. Pick early and raise the wine in stainless steel tanks without the influence of oak, and you get tightly wound, super-refreshing and minerally styles. Opt in for fancy barrels, and chardonnay begins to take on spice, savouriness, and nutty and toasty complexity. Let chardonnay come to the winery a little riper and you get power and presence, richness and intensity – if more oak is used here, then welcome to Flavourtown. Population: you.

Regionality also plays a hand. Where chardonnay grows has a distinct impact on its varied and many personalities. Want tension and mineral-laced elegance? Chablis has you covered. Feeling like opulence, full cream and nougat, and that signature ‘I’ve been in a nice French barrel’ swagger? Hello, classic Burgundy. Are you after a lean, nervy, citrus-and-saline, refreshing, tense white that could slice through bone? Adelaide Hills, Tasmania and Tumbarumba are ready to blow your mind. Power and grace? Look no further than Margaret River and Mornington Peninsula. Ripe stone fruits, gingery spice and buttered toast? Let’s go to McLaren Vale, California or Coonawarra. Generalisations maybe, but regional stereotypes help explain some of chardonnay’s magnificent spectrum.

One grape, endless possibilities

Other white grapes often come with a signature: riesling and its laser-like acidity, sauvignon blanc and that passionfruit-meets-cat pee thing, pinot gris with its nashi pear painted in watercolour. Chardonnay? It can be all of these things and more, but more refined.

Chardonnay seduces with a kind of tactile precision few grapes can match. The line of acidity that feels like tightrope-walker stuff, yet can support a plumper flavour profile. It’s where minerality, creaminess and textural grip meet in a three-way handshake of brilliance. You get wines that hum with energy, wines that glisten with acidity and restraint, wines that swish through the palate with a sense of opulence and luxury. Then there’s age-worthiness. Chardonnay isn’t just about youthful thrills; they can and do grow old with grace, evolving from citrus and stone fruits into honeyed toast, grilled nuts, truffle and honey. Something for now, something for the cellar.

The ABC club (Anything But Chardonnay) are card-carrying members of a collective that doesn’t know what it’s on about. There, it’s said. Sure, some chardonnay may be too much for some – too oaky, too buttery, too rich – but at the other end of the spectrum, there’s chardonnay that does the same trick as NZ savvy B: racy and tart and thirst quenching. And of course, there’s that myriad of personalities in between. Anoint the winner. Shout it from the rooftops. Hand over the gold medal. The real champion is chardonnay.

Three to try

Old school good school: 2024 Patrick Sullivan Chardonnay (South Australia, $30)

From a blend of vineyards between several wine regions in South Australia, this is an unapologetic, medium-to-full-weight chardonnay that marries ripe stone fruits, nougat and vanilla cream with gingery spice and a core of briny minerality. It drinks with charm now, but watch it sing in a decade, too.

Light, fresh white: 2024 Dr. Edge Tasmania Chardonnay (Tasmania, $60)

The wine sits at an unnervingly lower alcohol percentage, but flavour is built up from lees (yeast) influence and its time in various oak and ceramic vessels. Racy, tight, lean and bright, it shows off Tasmania’s cool-climate wine-growing while also being a chardonnay of impeccable, succulent deliciousness.

An naturale: Lucy M Le Petit Piccadilly Chardonnay 2024 (Adelaide Hills, $35)

This is wild fermented, left to mature in ceramic eggs, bottled without fining and filtration and sees no additives, including no sulphur (preservative). It’s ultra-pure, a touch wild with its dash of dried herbs and truffle, but more a celebration of frisky citrus fruits, green pear and sea-spray characters. Loose knit, free form and gulpable.