McHenry Hohnen is the quintessential family owned business with Murry McHenry and David Hohnen being brothers-in-law and the winemaking now being handled by David's son-in-law Ryan Walsh. With decades of Western Australian winemaking and selling history behind David and Murray the wines being produced are of utmost purity and subtlety. The Burnside Chardonnay is a relative recent addition to the range and is a funky, wild little number with attractive stone fruit characters that are balanced by a beautiful natural acidity.

Many of us wine drinkers have a soft spot for Chablis. Its with great reason too, given our climate and affi nity with seafood. A little over two months ago, we were thrilled when this wine hit our shores for the first time following a selective buying trip. Once again, it showcased its undisputed quality and notoriety in our tasting sessions. Established in 1850, this small family owned domain is the proven choice of so many when it comes to great Chablis. The estate comprises a mere 45 hectares of vines scattered throughout the region, grown on the famous Kimmeridgian limestone soils. Textbook in expression and style, super fi ne and elegant, this 2013 has perfectly poised, piercing acidity. This drives superb length of flavour on the featherweight light palate. Is there a better oyster wine?

Lanson Blanc de Blancs Champagne was created by winemaker Herve Dantan, when he joined the Lanson House back in 2013. It combines the freshness style of Lanson champagnes with the delicacy of the Chardonnay. The grapes come from the best Chardonnay crus in Champagne including Oger, Cramant, Le Mesnil-sur-Oger, and Vertux. It is made with 40% reserve wines from Grands and Premiers Crus matured in Oak Cask and gets aged for 5 years in the Lanson House cellars before getting released.Lanson Blanc de Blancs is a gold luminous champagne with fine and lively bubbles. The nose reveal aromas of fine pastry, frangipane notes, candied citrus and fresh pear. On the palate this champagne is precise and generous, with flavours of candied lemon, almond, nougat and honey and a long finish.

What a magnificent wine! A pioneer in the modern Australian Chardonnay stakes, the Vat 47 from the Hunter Valley has a silky bouquet of melon stone fruit and creamy oak that is followed by a palate of extraordinary balance and length. An absolute classic and will only get better with some medium term ageing.

One of the rare Penfolds wines that is 100% single-regional, the Reserve Bin Chardonnay is sourced from super premium sites in the Adelaide Hills resulting in a fresh, mineral style that lies at the forefront of the modern Chardonnay style. A wine that will always be linked with 'White Grange', Penfolds Yattarna, it shows a palate of Granny Smith apples and lemon curd with a pure chalky texture.

The wine expresses characters of lemon curd, glazed apricot Danish, ginger snap and orange blossom team with savoury underlying buckwheat, lanolin and toasty char complexity. These work in concert with a tactile calcareous interplay underpinning a silky pear-like texture. A lingering line of acidity provides the backbone but allows for the richness, weight and flavour, directing to a resounding and expansive finish. where body, flavour & palate weight co-exist with structure, texture and restrained acidity. Complex fruit characters of white nectarine, saffron, Pink Lady apple, chamomile flower, cashews and Leatherwood honey work in concert with a tactile interplay of chalk, silkiness and Beurre Bosc pear-like texture. Subtle acidity provides the backbone conveying the fruit and weight to a resounding finish.

Pale gold in the glass, with green highlights. The nose is lifted and aromatic with white blossom, ripe, yellow stonefruits, toasty oak characters, and a complex nuttiness, shot through by minerality. The palate is rich and textural, with layers of fruit, balanced by citrus-like acidity. Long and finely detailed on the finish. 100% Chardonnay from vineyards in the small appellation of Ladoix.The soils of the upper slopes are pebbly and reddish (iron-rich olite) with a high limestone content and quite marly. These suit great white wines. The grapes are harvested by hand and then directly pressed in a pneumatic press. Alcoholic fermentation takes place entirely in French oak barrels, of which 30% are new. The lees are stirred (bâtonnage) occasionally during ageing, which lasts 10 months. Jaffelins history is inseparable from that of the Collégiale Notre Dame de Beaune (the Notre Dame collegiate church in Beaune). Over the centuries, their cellars have housed the wines of the Collégiale and the Cardinals. The cellars changed ownership in 1816, when the Jaffelin brothers established themselves as negociants in the region. Today their wines rest in the monastic tranquility of the Chapitres cellars, just as they did eight centuries ago. Jaffelin entered a new chapter in its history in 2004, after completely renovating the vat room, and equipping it with modern winemaking equipment. They strive to bring out the Burgundy terroirs, cru by cru, wine by wine, at every stage of the winemaking process.

Sourced and grown in the Adelaide Hills, this is a fine example of how good Chardonnay from this region can be. This is a blend of 3 different cultivars of the Chardonnay grape. Bunch pressed and in part wild fermented. Partial malolactic fermentation imparts further complexity. A beautifully textured and complex wine.

Sourced from dry-grown, hand tended vines in the north east of Victoria, this Beechworth Chardonnay from Savaterre will surely convince even the most hardened Chardonnay critic that modern Australian Chardonnay is of supreme world-class standard. Keppell Smith handcrafts a Chardonnay of utmost power and concentration that produces a length of flavour that borders on the immortal.

This Katherines Paddock Chardonnay combines the richness, drive and classicism of one clone with the fine-boned flinty structure and chalky notes of the other. It is stylish with the modern expression of Australian style Chardonnay: tense, taut and sulphidic. It reclaims the middle ground where body, flavour and palate weight co-exist with structure, texture and restrained acidity. This single-vineyard Chardonnay has well integrated natural acidity with rich varietal expression.