Adelaide Hills’ Best Chardonnay

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  • Wines Of Now

    Adelaide Hills’ Best Chardonnay

    The Adelaide Hills has perhaps the strongest claim of any Australian region to having been built on chardonnay, with its sights set on high-quality examples since the first modern vineyard was planted there in 1979. While there’s no shortage of interest in Hills chardonnays, the sheer diversity of sites, viticultural techniques, and winemaking approaches makes the region’s wines difficult to categorise. Just what does or should quintessential Adelaide Hills chardonnay taste like in 2025? We decided to take a Deep Dive to find out.

  • Wines Of Now

    Margaret River’s Best Chardonnay

    Margaret River stands apart among Australia’s chardonnay regions – remote, relatively young, dominated by a single chardonnay clone, and paired with cabernet sauvignon rather than pinot noir. This sense of exceptionalism has translated into international recognition: for many wine buyers outside of Australia, Margaret River chardonnay represents Australian white wine at its finest, rivalling Barossa shiraz in status and importance. With this upstart region making compelling claims to producing some of the world’s best chardonnays, we thought it was time for a closer look via a Deep Dive.

  • Wines Of Now

    Mornington Peninsula’s Best Chardonnay

    Few wine regions worldwide – let alone within Australia – are quite as glamorous as the Mornington Peninsula. It’s a region of beautiful scenery and sophisticated architecture – almost tailor-made for destination dining and wine tourism, not to mention a booming property market of beachside holiday homes. You might therefore expect the region’s winemakers to coast along on the region’s natural assets – but you’d be dead wrong. The Peninsula’s winemakers are on a collective mission to make high-quality, compelling wines that justify their often-substantial price tags, and the results of this quest are so interesting that we felt the need to take a Deep Dive.

  • Wines Of Now

    Yarra Valley’s Best Chardonnay

    Ever since the early 2000s, the Yarra Valley has been determined to go against the grain of Australian chardonnay – pioneering crisp, vibrant, and mineral-driven styles of wine that expanded the range of what many of us thought was possible with the variety. Yarra producers have also been on a mission to change how we think as well as how we drink, with the region as a whole leaning in on single-vineyard wines inspired by the great chardonnay-based wines of Burgundy. With a new generation of producers seeking to further balance the Yarra’s chardonnays with a little extra fruit generosity and potentially a kiss of new oak, there’s never been a better time to take the pulse of this region’s prestige white wine with a Deep Dive.

  • Wines Of Now

    Barossa’s Best Grenache

    Grenache has been a bit-player in Australian wine since our earliest days of growing and making. It was a vital cog in the powerhouse that was fortified wine production from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, then later became a component in South Australia’s celebrated take on the wines of the Southern Rhône. But it is not until relatively recently that the grape has confidently stepped out on its own, emerging from shiraz’s long shadow to forge an identity that is as exciting as any other variety in this country – red, white, old, or emerging. The spotlight is often swung to McLaren Vale when the grenache renaissance is discussed – but the revolution is no less vibrant in the Barossa. So much so that a second Deep Dive was in order.

  • Wines Of Now

    Australia’s Best Aged Shiraz

    Shiraz is Australia’s most widely-planted variety, and we produce millions of litres of wine from it every year. While much of this wine is designed to be consumed relatively young and fresh, Australian producers also make shiraz-based wines of impressive structure that have the ability to agree gracefully in the cellar for years – and in some cases decades – slowly gaining layers of complexity and earthiness while losing some of their tannic grip. As Australian shiraz approaches a crossroads, with too many vines in the ground and not enough buyers, can aged shiraz released via museum programs help reignite our love affair with this quintessentially Australian variety? We felt that a Deep Dive was in order to find out.

  • Wines Of Now

    Australia’s Best Skin Contact Whites

    What does a ‘skin-contact white wine’ mean in Australia in 2025? It’s certainly a much tougher question to answer now than it was when we first took a Deep Dive into the topic back in 2019. Following in the wake of a handful of trailblazing definers of the genre, a much more diverse array of winemakers – at all points on the spectrum from ‘natural’ to ‘conventional’ – are now macerating some or all of their white grapes on skins during fermentation. The resulting wines are as diverse as their makers: some so deeply coloured they could be mistaken for light reds, and others so light-on they could slip into the white by the glass section of your local bistro’s list. With such a huge palette of colour and flavour for makers to play with, we thought it was time to revisit the subject and do another Deep Dive.

  • Wines Of Now

    Australia’s Best Mataro / Mourvèdre / Monastrell

    Whether you call it by its Australian, French, or Spanish name, this grape variety makes intensely flavoured wines that are sometimes challenging – but always intriguing. Mataro is often relegated to the role of a bit-player as the ‘M’ in Australia’s favourite red blend, GSM, and has a long history of discreetly working its magic in the background of some of Australia’s most popular fortified wines. But in Australia’s warming climate, and with a new generation of viticulturists and winemakers ready to tackle this variety’s sometimes-difficult traits in order to make wines of unique complexity and character, mataro is finally stepping out of the shadows. With so much potential to be found in Australia’s mataro-based wines, we thought it was time to go on a Deep Dive into the heart of this mysterious variety.

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Australia’s Best Mataro / Mourvèdre / Monastrell

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