Tasting Notes: Pineapple, nectarine and lime aromatics along with lengthy butterscotch and biscotti flavours. A well-structured wine to be enjoyed from now to 2020.

An excellent food wine, it matches well with just about any foods you might match a dry white wine to, but fresh white seafood dishes (white fish, squid, prawns & crabs) are perhaps the best accompaniment to this wine.

Hungerford Hill is a premium Hunter Valley winery, but they have a long history of making prestige wines from NSW's cool Tumbarumba region. This one shows the region's cool, crisp, citrus and nectarine rich style off to perfection. So much so that it won Gold AND the Trophy at the Canberra Wine Show! Now that's impressive!

Andrew grew up in the world of wine and went on to work for some top names in Australia before settling down to craft really characterful, great value wines like this one, under his own name. A small amount of fermentation in oak has lent The Full Fifteen Chardonnay lovely toasty nuances, a nutty complexity and a soft creamy character.

With 130 years of expertise under the family’s belt, Angove have plenty of experience to call upon. In recent years they have been awarded ‘Winery of the Year’ and many medals besides for individual wines. Fourth generation John Angove now heads up the cellar that Dr William Angove started in 1886 near Adelaide (by making award winning brandy – a product they’re still famous for) and, besides championing unusual grapes, John also pioneers modern styles of wine. His 2018 turns its back on the weighty, golden, heavily oaked Chardonnays of last century and embraces bright stone fruit, shot through by lemony brilliance. No wonder this grape is back in favour.

Customers invariably ask: "What's Blanc de Blancs Champagne and what makes it so special?" The Champagne region grows three grapes, two red – Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier – and one white ¬– Chardonnay. Blanc de Blancs is made only from Chardonnay and, as Hugh Johnson says, it therefore has "great grace and less weight than traditional Champagne". Laithwaite's is a tip-top example which for years has been expertly created for us by superb cellars in Avize, one of Champagne's finest villages. This particular cuvée is 100% Premier Cru vineyards and was matured for 30 months before release – double the required minimum – to ensure a really luxurious character. Showing complex white blossom, citrus and toasted brioche notes, it has great finesse, a very fine mousse, and the perfect amount of acidity to cut through a range of delicious canapés such as velvety chicken or duck liver parfait.

Richard Angove was very lucky to have grown up in a winemaking family. Since 1886, five generations of his family have worked in winemaking and grape growing. In 2008 he worked harvest in the beautiful Tamar Valley in northern Tasmania. He just loved the landscape, vineyards and flavours of the wines. Many years later when the opportunity arose to work with a number of small growers to create a range of small batch wines, he could not resist the opportunity, and so Lost Farm Wines was born.

Multi Trophy-winning Sam Trimboli must be one of the country's most in-demand winemakers. But after 30-odd years working for other wineries, he took the big step of setting up on his own in 2018 – and, being an old friend of ours, we backed him every step of the way. In return, Sam creates some excellent wines just for us, most have become bestsellers. We suspect this cracking Chardonnay will shortly join them.