The Greatest Chardonnay Showdown

NB: This is a free audio taster – the full episode is available exclusively for Wine Blast PLUS subscribers. Use this link to subscribe to Wine Blast PLUS.

Summary

27 wines – 18 top tasters – an epic blind tasting featuring just one grape: Chardonnay.

From all around the world – Grand Cru Burgundy to vintage champagne via Western Australia, Sonoma County and even Japan.

Who would be the big winners?

And, more importantly, why?!

That’s what we’re getting into in this intriguing subscriber-only bonus episode on The Greatest Chardonnay Showdown blind tasting at the London Wine Fair 2026.

We were both privileged to be part of the stellar judging panel – so what were our considered thoughts, did we agree with the overall results…and did we even agree with each other?!

Seasoned listeners may already have an instinct where this one is heading…suffice it to say there are opinions aplenty, some consensus but also a fair amount of healthy disagreement.

Ultimately, hopefully, it all makes for an informative and thought-provoking episode about one of our (and the world’s) favourite grape varieties.

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Wines

This is a full list of the 27 wines that were served at the Greatest Chardonnay Showdown blind tasting on 18th May 2026 at the London Wine Fair.

NB: in the episode, we refer to the Penfolds Yattarna vintage as 2020 – when in fact it was the 2019 we tasted.

Dom Ruinart Blanc de Blancs 2013, Champagne, France
Graham Beck CH14:277 Blanc de Blancs, Robertson, South Africa
Storm, Ridge Chardonnay 2024, Hemel-en-Aarde, Walker Bay, South Africa
Sieur d’Arques Toques & Clochers, Haute Vallée Chardonnay 2024, Limoux, France
Ataraxia Chardonnay 2024, Hemel-en-Aarde, Walker Bay, South Africa
Domaine Donatsch, Unique Chardonnay Malans 2024, Graubünden, Switzerland
Takahiko Soga Yoichi-Nobori Chardonnay 2024, Hokkaido, Japan
Dr. Heger Ihringer Winklerberg Chardonnay 2023, Baden, Germany
Danbury Ridge Octagon Block Chardonnay 2023, Essex, England
Chapel Down Kit’s Coty Chardonnay 2023, Kent, England
Familia Deicas Preludio Barrel Select Lote No 29 2020, Canelones, Uruguay
Tolpuddle Vineyard Chardonnay 2023, Coal River Valley, Tasmania, Australia
Shaw + Smith M3 Chardonnay 2021, Adelaide Hills, South Australia, Australia
Vasse Felix Heytesbury Chardonnay 2020, Margaret River, Western Australia, Australia
Kistler Les Noisetiers Chardonnay 2022, Sonoma Coast, USA
Peter Michael Winery Belle Côte Chardonnay 2021, Sonoma, USA
Penfolds Yattarna Bin 144 Chardonnay 2019, Australia
Viña Aquitania Sol de Sol Chardonnay 2024, Traiguén, Malleco, Chile
Bell Hill Limeworks Chardonnay 2020, North Canterbury, New Zealand
Coche-Dury Bourgogne Chardonnay 2020, Burgundy, France
Domaine François Raveneau Chablis Montée de Tonnerre 1er Cru 2021, Burgundy, France
Alex Moreau Chassagne-Montrachet 1er Cru Chenevottes 2022, Burgundy, France
Henri Boillot Bâtard-Montrachet Grand Cru 2022, Burgundy, France
Antinori Castello della Sala Cervaro della Sala 2023, Umbria, Italy
Ktima Katsarou Stella Chardonnay 2020, Kranias Olympus, Greece
Felton Road Bannockburn Chardonnay 2021, Central Otago, New Zealand
Torres Milmanda 2018, Conca de Barberà, Spain

Recommendations

So, on the basis of our results (and the prices), which wines would we recommend?

Ataraxia Chardonnay 2024 (South Africa)
Shaw & Smith M3 Chardonnay 2021 (Australia)
Tolpuddle Chardonnay 2023 (Australia)
Storm Ridge Chardonnay 2024 (South Africa)
Danbury Ridge Octagon Block 2023 (England)
Vasse Felix Heytesbury Chardonnay 2020 (Australia)
Katsarou Stella Chardonnay 2020 (Greece)
Graham Beck CH14:277 Blanc de Blancs Artisan Collection 2020 (South Africa)

Links

At the start of this show, we reference a previous episode entitled The Best White Wine Grape Is….
Here’s a link to the official London Wine Fair press release from The Greatest Chardonnay Showdown
And here’s a link to the previous Icon Tasting at the London Wine Fair we also reference: Battle of the Bubbles
Australian wine legend Brian Croser declared Chardonnay to be the best wine grape of all in our recent episode Adelaide Hills: Lofty Ambitions
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Transcript

NB: This is a transcript of the short taster audio (as above) rather than the full show. It’s AI generated, so it’s not perfect.

Greatest Chardonnay Showdown TEASER

Susie: Hello, Hello! This is a brief taster of a subscriber bonus episode we touched on in our last show, all about the most magnificent tasting we did, called The Greatest Chardonnay Showdown.

Peter: Not to be confused with a hoedown. Or a certain Hugh Jackman / Zendaya film. All very different things. Even if they could be fun together, thinking about it, if you could do all three together. Wow. Anyway, keep focused. The full-length episode is available now for our Wine Blast PLUS subscribers. So if you like what you hear in this taste, do sign up to listen to the programme in full.

Susie: So, yes, this was a rather grand tasting put on by the organisers of the London wine fair, pitting 27 top chardonnays from all around the world against each other in a rigorous blind tasting. From Grand Cru Burgundy to vintage Champagne via Western Australia, Sonoma County, and even Japan. Who would prevail?

Peter: Oh, feel like we need some, nice sound effects there, which I clearly don’t have. They were not invested. anyway, 18 top tasters had been assembled. Somehow the two of us wangled an invitation as well. with masters of wine and master sommeliers aplenty, all with open minds and a healthy Chardonnay thirst. And the results are intriguing. from the overall greatest Chardonnay of the world to the best emerging region Chardonnay to the best value Chardonnays, the results are well worth discussing and digesting.

Susie: And we’re very good at discussing and digesting, aren’t we? But we not only do that with tastings like this, very often it’s just. Just the headlines that grab all the attention or some of the overall consensus results. What we found most intriguing about this tasting was the granular detail, why certain wines did well and others didn’t. You know, what were the secrets to the best wines. That kind of thing, you know. So to convey that level of nuance, we go into our own individual scores and tasting notes to try to wrestle with this delicious enigma that is Chardonnay and get right to the heart of quality and style for this fabulous grape.

Peter: Don’t forget, this is the grape variety that Australian wine legend Brian Croser officially declared to be the best wine grape, full stop. that was an exclusive Wine Blast revelation. First time he’s ever said that on the Adelaide Hills episode. So this is a key topic to be addressing right now.

Susie: So if you want to keep properly abreast of key topics in the wine world, do sign up to Wine Blast PLUS, you’ll also be supporting the podcast enabling us to keep doing what we do, which will earn you our lifelong gratitude. And we’ve got other bonus episodes. Episodes including a unique blind tasting of top 2021 Super Tuscans. Plus fascinating interviews with the likes of wine royalty Hugh Johnson, Hollywood actor and proud Kiwi wine producer Sam Neill, and Coravin founder Greg Lambrecht. Not to mention a magnificent hundred-point wine tasting, which features a heated debate on the point of scoring wines more generally.

Peter: If you sign up, you’ll also get early, access to all episodes and benefit from subscriber only discounts with the likes of Coravin, Jancis Robinson Glassware and Academie du Vin Library. Not only that, you also get full archive access as our back catalogue gradually moves behind the paywall. We’d love you to join the gang. Just head to wineblast.co.uk or follow the link in the show notes.

Susie: For now though, here are a couple of snippets from this bonus episode on the greatest Chardonnay showdown tasting.

Susie: I like to think I was right in the thick of the zeitgeist there. You know, given this really isn’t far off the overall top 10.

Peter: You are such a teacher’s pet. You really are. on the other hand, I pride myself on being a maverick.

Susie: You are a maverick.

Peter: You always will be. Putting the cat amongst the pigeons.

Susie: So you’re completely different, right?

Peter: Outstanding value.

Susie: Stunning value.

Peter: Kevin Grant calls this an unapologetically wooded Chardonnay, even though actually only about 17% of the oak was new. Apparently. it’s another wine from Hemel-en-Aarde. oh, for me, this just. This is a wine that sang. It’s rich but not over the top. It’s very long, it’s seamless, golden sun kissed fruit, but also fresh mineral, saline, savoury. For me, it was Grand Cru level. You love. This was my favourite wine of the tasting.

Susie: Of the whole tasting.

Peter: It was my top. It was our first, fourth favourite overall outside the fizz. So, yeah, I mean, I was big on this one.

Susie: Yeah, I mean, I think, I think you were bigger than me. And, I, I thought it was great. You know what I liked about it was it had a quirkiness to it. I put quirky rather than classy. There was a smoky note sort of underlying there. There was something slightly waxy on the nose, resinous in the mouth. I mean, it had lots of character and tangy baked fruit. it was interest, indifferent, I felt, rather than okay, grand cru, okay.

Peter: But I mean, what I want from my Chardonnay, I want some generosity.

Susie: Yeah, well, no, and that’s fair, but it’s all got to be imbalanced. I’m not saying that wasn’t. It was just, you know, for me,

Peter: not one of the top lines, I have to say. Lingers for ages. Very, very, very long. Generous texture, but also refreshing. Anyway, I love that.

Susie: So it’s a fifth-generation Swiss producer who were inspired by Burgundy. And I just. I was really impressed

00:05:00

Susie: with this, you know, really impressed. It was complex. It was creamy, mealy, mineral. There was a touch of reduction. Very elegant, steely. I mean, it was my fourth favourite, if you discount the fizz. I mean, the only thing I would say, slightly oily finish, but other than that, absolutely great.

Peter: Yeah, I think, you were really impressed. I was initially quite impressed. And then I came back to it. I found the oak dominated too much. It was really smoky and pithy and toasty. But, you know, like I say, the more I came back, the more the oak dominated. It almost veered into sort of smoky bacon. You know, how oak can go into that.

Susie: Who doesn’t like smoky bacon?!

Peter: You’re right. Actually, who doesn’t love a bacon sandwich, but at the same time, maybe not in my glass of Chardonnay. And also I found a fair bit of wood tannin on the palate. Coming through. That’s when you think there’s too much wood. And I found the acidity a little bit sour coming back. So, you know, ultimately initially impressed me. When I came back, it seemed a bit worked or contrived. So actually, this ended up as my lowest score. Funny enough, for that reason, because I don’t want my Chardonnay overworked.

Susie: Oh, gosh, no. Okay, well, we just. We’ll disagree agreeably on that one.

Peter: Okay.

Susie: What about the next one? I think we probably do agree on this wine.

Peter: No. Well, let’s see. Number seven, Takahiko Soga Yoichi Nobori Chardonnay 2024, from Japan.

Susie: I’m, pleased you said that.

Peter: 11.5%. I’m not sure I said it right. So, apparently he’s a bit of a legend. and this wine is something of a unicorn. So it was amazing to have it in the tasting, really. very different register, wasn’t it?

Susie: This wine, when you say unicorn, why do you say that?

Peter: Well, it’s just incredibly hard to find. I mean, I couldn’t. I couldn’t even. I was trying to research it. I can’t find it. There’s no digital footprint in this wine. Does not exist. It’s like Steven Spurrier’s English wine in Paris customs does not exist. So anyway, I might be being silly, but, you know, definitely in terms of the wine, really different, isn’t it? I smelled this one and I was like, oh, what is, what is going on here? But I quite liked it. So it was quite heady. There was some lactone type, high tone aromas. I think he’s quite a natural producer, I believe. Please write and tell me about him. Because it’s, you know, the main thing was the key elements of the wine. There was some lovely acidity. it was quite mealy and good texture. Good lees work. Nicely done. I wrote, so I gave it a pretty decent mark. Even though I couldn’t quite get my head around. I wanted to sit with it for a long time.

Susie: Yeah, no, I think this was, this was actually one of my lowest marks. But because I wrote it seems to be from an entirely different location, which it was. and I found it sort of fresh and soft and blossomy and just a totally different expression of Chardonnay. really interesting to taste and not one of my better marks. But hey, you know, who gets to taste Japanese Chardonnay every day? We don’t.

Peter: You know, I just really know. I wrote it smells like freshly made salted popcorn with a bit of butter and salted caramel on top.

Susie: Lovely.

Peter: What’s not to like about that?

Peter: It’s interesting just listening to our notes on the French wines. A lot of them are kind of like really solid, really accomplished, but just not thrilling us. And I think that maybe that’s an interesting point to pick up on. You’d expect at this level that, you know, that they would be thrilling.

Susie: However, we haven’t got on to the next one yet.

Peter: We haven’t. Shall we? In about. I’m going to say this in a whisper. £700 a, bottle. A bottle. I may have been a bit de-mob happy here and slightly seduced by the maturity you love. A bit of old paper again. That sunniness is my fifth favourite. You weren’t a fan, but, you know, I just got clotted cream, I got quince fig, old paper, old champagne. Love that little bit of age and maturity. It wasn’t a little bit. It was a lot actually. Complex, savoury richness. but you know, also a mineral, sort of saline energy and Drive on the finish. I said old but good. Not great, but good.

Susie: Yeah, I mean, I, I, but I think it’s just a bit old. In my, my book, Mushroomy, very developed. It is. I said, yes, it’s layered, but just a bit too much. I think it lacked freshness and energy. Very tertiary. I did say maybe for a truffle risotto.

Peter: Oh, that’s a nice idea.

Susie: So we could do that, couldn’t we?

Peter: So I finished on a high, blasting off into the stratosphere. You were sort of slightly overwhelmed by this thing, but you were still thinking.

Susie: I’m thinking food. By this point, after 27 wines, I was really hungry.

Peter: Fair enough. I was leaping out the tasting and you were heading for dinner.

Susie: So what are our conclusions?

Peter: Okay, good. I mean, really fascinating tasting. I think we both love Chardonnay, and I’m sure a lot of you guys out there, nobody knows that. Well, but it’s, you know, it is the most fabulous grape variety. It’s sometimes this, but actually, do you know, what? It’s fantastic. We’re on record for saying with Chardonnay tarts, it’s probably one of, if not our favourite grape varieties. So amazing to be able to explore it like this.

Susie: I mean, but saying that, you know, does mean we have pretty high standards, doesn’t it? Yeah, we do. There are certain things you want from a Chardonnay. I want from a Chardonnay. You want refreshment value. It can’t be, as we’ve been discussing, sweet or cloying. And then you need complexity and layers of flavour. Fruit, yes, but ideally savoury layers beyond that fruit. Often that’s with oak, but that needs to be done well and not overdone. You can, you know, the lees can do that or other things, you know, that struck match reduction, for example. But yeah, it should have more than one or two dimensions. It needs to be 3D.

Peter: Yeah. Ah, a 3D wine, 3D shard. you need special glasses to drink it. So there we have it. if you’d like

00:10:00

Peter: to hear the show in full, all you have to do is subscribe to Wine Blast PLUS at wineblast.co.uk or follow the link in our show notes. As a subscriber, you get early access to all episodes and enjoy subscriber only bonus content like this show, as well as full archive access.

Susie: You’ll also be supporting the show and benefiting from subscriber only discounts with the likes of Coravin, Jancis Robinson Glassware and Academie du Vin Library. We’d love it if you signed up. Meantime, thanks for listening. Here’s to the glory of Chardonnay and Cheers.

00:10:33