Buttery Chardonnay is Back: Toasting a Classic Style
Buttery chardonnay is hard to find. Or at least, it was. It was everywhere in the 1990s – back when Lindemans Bin 65, Petaluma Chardonnay, Rosemount, Rothbury Estate and Tyrrell's were in their buttery pomp — and then, for the best part of two decades, it all but vanished, as almost everyone at both the premium and everyday level pursued crisper, fresher styles.
What’s happening right now though is one of the great pendulum swings of modern wine. Buttery chardonnay is back. It's still out of fashion at the premium end of the market but at the everyday end it’s back so hard that producers are now printing the word “Buttery” on the front label, in big letters, as the actual name of the wine. That would have been unthinkable not long ago. Today it's a shelf category.
This page tells that story — and, more usefully, it funnels you to every buttery chardonnay I've reviewed and tagged on this site.
What makes a chardonnay buttery?
The butteriness itself is no mystery. Most of it comes from malolactic fermentation — the secondary (bacterial) fermentation that converts sharp malic acid (think green apples) into softer lactic acid (think milk, cream). One of the by-products of this conversion is a compound called diacetyl, which is, quite literally, the flavour compound of butter; it's the same thing used to make popcorn taste buttered. Put a chardonnay through full malo and you soften its acid line and coax out that unmistakable butterscotch-and-cream character.
Layer on top of that: fermentation and maturation in oak barrels (toast, vanilla, cashew), stirring of the yeast lees (texture, breadth, a kind of creamy nuttiness) and a good level of ripeness to the fruit (peach and melon rather than lemon and grapefruit), and you have the full buttery package. It's a “made” style, a winemaker's style, and when it's done well – with enough acidity left in the wine to keep the richness honest – it's can be one of the most purely delicious styles of white wine there is (fashion swings aside). The difference between a great buttery chardonnay and a sloppy one is a) freshness; the butter should sit on good bread, so to speak, not on a doughy roll; and the pure quality and intensity of the fruit flavour itself. The absolute best buttery-styled chardonnays offer a rich power of fruit, as the hero item, with the buttery notes as the icing.
The rise: chardonnay's golden buttery age
Australian chardonnay in the 1980s and 1990s was sunshine in a glass: ripe, generous, oaky, creamy, and the world couldn't get enough of it. Lindemans Bin 65 became one of the biggest-selling chardonnays on the planet. Rosemount (Diamond Label at the everyday end; Roxburgh as the premium) put chardonnay on a million dinner tables. Petaluma and Tyrrell's showed the style had a serious, cellar-worthy end too. If you drank white wine in that era, you drank buttery chardonnay, whether you called it that or not.
The fall: the flint and freshness years
Buttery chardonnay didn't disappear because drinkers stopped loving it; it disappeared because winemakers stopped making it. Somewhere in the mid-2000s Australian chardonnay took a hard turn towards Chablis or, in more accessible terms, towards purity of fruit, overall freshness, persistence, and balance.
So. Grapes were picked earlier, malolactic fermentation was suppressed or abandoned, new oak was dialled right back, and suddenly the buzzwords were flint, struck match, tension, refreshment and the ubiquitous crisp. Much of this was a good thing – some of the best white wines this country has ever produced came out of that shift – but the pendulum (especially in the everyday drinking stakes) swung so far that an entire style, a style many people flat-out prefer and wished had never changed, was more or less orphaned. If you cut your teeth on chardonnay in the 1990s and then wandered back into the aisle in 2015, you could be forgiven for thinking someone had swapped the labels. Chardonnay didn’t taste like chardonnay anymore.
The re-rise: when "Buttery" became a brand
Here's how you know a style has truly returned: producers stop hinting at it and start naming wines after it.
At the premium end, almost no producer puts the word "buttery" on a label; you still have to read between the lines (more on that below). But at the consumer end of the market, "Buttery" has gone from tasting-note adjective to front-label branding — nowhere more nakedly than with JaM Cellars' Butter Chardonnay, a California wine that became a commercial juggernaut on the strength of its name alone. The wines that have followed tell the story better than any trend piece could:
De Bortoli Buttery Chardonnay (Riverina) — launched in 2024, an Australian family winery putting the word front and centre at around $20
Woods Crampton Buttery Chardonnay (Limestone Coast) — a $12 Aldi wine, and proof the style now reaches the biggest-volume shelves in the country
[yellow tail] Buttery Chardonnay — yes, even [yellow tail] sells a wine called exactly that in the US
JaM Cellars Butter Chardonnay (California) — if not the trend-starter then right at the forefront of it
Bread & Butter Chardonnay (California) — now exported worldwide
Josh Cellars Reserve Buttery Chardonnay, 14 Hands Buttery Chardonnay, Prophecy Buttery Chardonnay, Clos du Bois Buttery Chardonnay, Buttercream Chardonnay and Cupcake's Butterkissed Chardonnay — an entire American shelf's worth
Indeed America's biggest wine retailer, Total Wine, now runs "Buttery Chardonnay" as its own browsable category, the same way it lists pinot grigio or rosé. The style that dared not speak its name through the flint years is now, literally, a category.
How to find a buttery chardonnay (when the label doesn't say so)
The blatant examples above make it easy. The rest of the market still makes you work. At the premium end, you have to read between the lines of back labels and tasting notes. The clearest signs are malolactic, creamy, barrel-fermented, lees-stirred, toasty and generous. The warning signs – if buttery is specifically what you're after – are flinty, struck match, taut, mineral. It’s unlikely that Chablis will be referenced but if it is, it’s not a buttery style.
Region helps a little (warmer regions, and traditional producers in the Hunter and parts of Margaret River, are better hunting grounds than wines from cool-climate regions, as a sweeping statement) but style now cuts across regions, so the producer and the label matters more than the postcode.
And that, really, is the reason for this page. So whenever I come across a buttery chardonnay for this site, I add a tag to the wine. I’m trying to make all buttery chardonnay reviews easy to find. Whenever I find a wine that suits the style – recent additions have run from a $12 Aldi buy to Margaret River, from California to the Riverina – I add the Buttery Chardonnay tag.
Buttery Chardonnay FAQ
What does "buttery" mean in chardonnay?
It describes a soft, creamy, butterscotch-like flavour and texture, produced mainly by malolactic fermentation (which creates diacetyl, the flavour compound of butter), usually amplified by oak barrels and lees stirring.
Why did buttery chardonnay go out of fashion?
From the mid-2000s winemakers – particularly in Australia – moved to a leaner, fresher style: earlier picking, less malolactic, less new oak. The buttery style was largely abandoned by producers, not necessarily by everyday drinkers.
Is buttery chardonnay coming back?
Yes and no. Producers in Australia and the US now sell wines literally named "Buttery Chardonnay" – including De Bortoli, Woods Crampton (via Aldi), [yellow tail], Josh Cellars and 14 Hands – and major retailers now treat it as a category of its own. At the more premium end of the chardonnay market (the part of the market where many of Australia’s best wines are producers) though Buttery Chardonnay is still out of favour, and will likely remain so.
What's the best buttery chardonnay in Australia?
It changes as I taste. Every buttery chardonnay reviewed on this site is collected under the [Buttery Chardonnay tag] with the bargains flagged on the [Best Value] pages.
What food goes with buttery chardonnay?
Anything that loves butter: roast chicken, lobster and crab, creamy pasta, corn, soft cheeses, popcorn. Richness with richness.
