The best chardonnay you’ve never heard of

I’d never heard of it anyway. A wine was sent here for review recently and when I tasted it I immediately thought of the moment, a couple of years ago, when I first tasted the Landaire at Padthaway Chardonnay 2021, which later won Halliday’s Chardonnay of the Year title. When I first poured that Landaire Chardonnay it was a little-known wine from a less-than-likely region. The fact that the Landaire was stunning – and would be responsible for my best wine moment of 2023 – was at the very least out of left field, if not a shock.

The wine I tasted last week had nothing to do with that Landaire, but it made the same kind of impression. It’s called Smeaton Estate Stella Chardonnay 2023. The full review is here, but to save you the click I say in this review “forget the descriptors. The result is a wine of brilliant intensity, character and length, and that’s all you need to know.” I scored it 96/100.

I only learned, a long time after I’d sung the praises of that original Landaire Chardonnay, that it had been made by Michael Downer of Murdoch Hill fame. Top level wine almost never comes out of nowhere; elite vineyards and elite hands are always involved, whether you know it (or them) or not. In the case of this Smeaton Chardonnay; it was grown on a vineyard that has been supplying top-end Adelaide Hills producers for nearly 30 years. Every now and then they (Jan and John Smeaton) keep some of their best grapes and bottle them under their own name. The 2023 Stella Chardonnay was made by none other than Con Moshos, who we know thanks to his exceptional work at Petaluma, among other locations.

This is a beautiful chardonnay. It’s a wine that, in the glass, seems to celebrate the variety itself or indeed to celebrate its own existence.

Smeaton Estate website.