Chardonnay

A beautifully fragrant Chardonnay that fuses traditional and modern winemaking techniques; whole bunch pressing, barrel fermentation, barrel maturation on gross lees, and malolactic fermentation. The nose offers lemon, white peach, popcorn and fresh pineapple and leads to a palate of lemon curd, cr?me br?l?e, toasted cashew and slight touches of flint and smoke. This is vibrant and juicy with refreshing acidity and plenty of concentration.

Chardonnay is king and queen at Bogle in California and it invests enormously in ensuring the Chardonnays meet up with market demand for big, buttery, vanilla and cedar flavours in the wine. All Chardonnays at Bogle are aged in oak and this wine, the flagship, spends eight months in new American oak barrels to gain creamy richness to enhance its ripe tropical fruit flavours and sweet toasted coconut finish. 

If you're a big buttery Chardonnay fan, come and get it.

Chardonnay is the world's most popular and widely consumed white wine, often referred to as the red drinker's white of choice, and it's New Zealand's third most popular grape variety. It thrives in this country's climate, making a wide range of styles, including this full bodied, creamy and fresh dry Chardonnay from Marlborough. A stunner at this price and fab value for money.

One of New Zealand?s best bubbles and one of its most consistent, complex handmade wines; it's typically a 70/30 blend of toasty flavours from Pinot Noir with crisp citrus creamy ones from Chardonnay. It comes from one of the country's oldest producers of traditional method sparkling wine - Rudi Bauer in Central Otago, who pioneered Quartz Reef Brut NV in the early days of Otago as a wine region.

Quartz Reef Brut NV began life when winemaker Rudi Bauer teamed up with a visiting French winemaker Clothilde Chauvet (daughter of champagne maker Marc Chauvet). Together they pioneered this high quality, traditional method sparkling wine, using mostly Pinot Noir (now 72% of the blend) with the balance being Chardonnay. The wine is typically aged for two years on lees in bottle following its second fermentation - longer than most champagnes. No wonder it massively over delivers on both taste and price. This is a stunning sparkling wine. Ignore at your peril.

Hawke's Bay winery Alpha Domus makes outstanding Chardonnay in a range of styles from sparkling to still and medium to full bodied, such as this big, dry, rich barrel fermented Chardonnay.

Cloudy Bay Wines first made its name with inimitable Sauvignon Blanc and has since forged a reputation for top quality wines made in a range of styles, of which Pelorus bubbly punches significantly above its weight. It?s made using the same winemaking methods as champagne, which provides this wine with its creamy, rich, flavoursome style, full body and dry finish. It is typically aged on lees for two years before the bubbly is disgorged, corked and labelled. It contains 8 grams of dosage per litre, which makes it taste dry with the balance of fresh acidity in the wine.

It offers stunning value at this price.  

Elephant Hill Chardonnay is made with grapes grown on the coast at Te Awanga, south of Napier where the cool sea breezes add zesty acidity to the grapes. This provides excellent balance to the creamy nuances of Chardonnay, which is one of Hawke's Bay's most popular grape varieties.

This wine is dry, creamy and full bodied. A stunner from our country's second biggest wine region. 

Big, buttery and oaky in taste, Durvillea Chardonnay is the little sister to Astrolabe Chardonnay. It's made with grapes grown in two parts of Marlborough with 66% from the Awatere Valley and 35% from Wairau Valley. 

All grapes in this wine were hand picked then fermented with a combination of wild and cultured yeasts. A portion of barrel fermentation adds weight and structure to this incredibly accessibly priced wine. 

Its flavours are of cream, ripe grapefruit and softness. 

The story of Astrolabe

Diversity, history and family ownership are among the reasons to try the outstanding range of wines from Astrolabe, which was founded in 1996 in Marlborough by winemaker Simon Waghorn and his partner in life and wine, Jane. 

Simon has forged a reputation for being one of New Zealand's most respected producers of aromatic white wines after winning an almost embarrassingly long string of awards for his Sauvignon Blancs. He has also forged a name for adventurously diverse winemaking - he produces dry flinty whites from the most southern vineyard in Marlborough at Kekerengu on the coast about an hour's drive south of Blenheim. He is the only winemaker to produce wines from here. 

He is also one of the few in this country to make Albarino, Chenin Blanc and a consistently outstanding range of wines from the organically certified hillside sloping site that is the Wrekin Vineyard in Marlborough. 

The winery remains family owned and is now run by two generations, including Simon and Jane as well as their adult daughters. 

Nautilus Cuvee Brut is inspired by the richness and depth of Bollinger Special Cuvee, which in turn takes its inspiration from Pinot Noir - which provides the toasty depths of flavour, along with three years ageing on lees in bottle, before release. The result is a dry, full bodied, deliciously yeasty sparkling wine is a blend of 71.4% Pinot Noir and 28.6% Chardonnay. All grapes are hand picked, fermented with a champagne yeast with only the first run of juice going to fermentation to retain a fineness in flavour and texture. The wine typically contains 5 to 15% of reserve wines, held back from previous vintages, to add complexity and consistency to the wine. 

It is aged on lees in bottle for three years prior to disgorgement, which takes place regularly to ensure every bottle on the market remains fresh in flavour. 

Winemaker Clive Jones creates a consistently vibrant sparkling wine here which has pronounced yeasty, fresh bread aromas and rich savoury flavours. 

Nautilus is a member of Method? Marlborough, a group of quality minded winemakers in the country's biggest wine region, who have dedicated themselves to producing sparkling wines with a minimum of 18 months aging in the bottle and made 100% from grapes grown in their region.

Odyssey Wines is owned by winemaker Rebecca Salmond, who sources grapes from a number of different regions. She produces exceptionally good value wines, including this full bodied, creamy big Chardonnay from Gisborne; the fifth biggest wine region in New Zealand - and aptly named the country's Chardonnay Capital.

Kumeu River Wines is New Zealand's top Chardonnay producer and best known globally. 

The winery is in the West Auckland village of Kumeu where it began life as San Marino Wines in 1944 when Croatian immigrant couple, Mick and Kat? Brajkovich, bought a small property with a vineyard on it. Their descendents now own and run Kumeu River Wines, which produces 250,000 bottles of wine annually from its owns 30 hectares of vineyards in Kumeu and from another 10 hectares, owned by local grape growers. 

This wine, Kumeu River Estate Chardonnay is the flagship white from the winery. It is made from  grapes grown on six different vineyard sites in Kumeu and is consistently one of New Zealand's greatest dry, full bodied whites with outstanding freshness and complexity.

This great white drinks well now and can also age well for up to 10 years, potentially longer. 

Top value big buttery Chardonnay, full of appealing creamy malolactic flavours and buttery aromas adding softness, richness and depth to this intensely powerful Chardonnay, which represents fab value for money.

Clearview Estate founder and winemaker Tim Turvey has made some of Hawke's Bay best Chardonnays for decades and this big softie puts the big buttery foot forward for the world's most popular dry white wine. 

About Clearview Estate

Clearview Estate is one of oldest, most well established wineries in Hawke's Bay and is situated on the Te Awanga Coast, south of Napier. It's a great place to visit for tastings at the cellar door as well as lunch in the dappled shade of the established courtyard area. The winery was founded by Tim Turvey, winemaker and co-owner. The current winemaker is the multi talented Matt Kirby.

Lovely dry, full bodied French Chardonnay, made by Cave de Lugny, a cooperative of over 250 winemakers in the Macon region in southern Burgundy. The Macon region is the warmest area of the world's most famous Chardonnay wine region and provides high quantities of grapes to make accessibly priced, very good quality dry whites like this one. 

Stony soils, hot days and cool nights make Craggy Range's Gimblett Chardonnay the dry, full bodied, fleshy white wine that it is. Grapes were 100% destemmed and fermented in French oak barriques with a combination of indigenous and innoculated yeasts followed by nine months aging in barriques, 23% new.
The result is a creamy, smooth, dry Chardonnay for drinking now and over the next four to five years. 

A stunner. Great value for money.