Woods Crampton Buttery Chardonnay 2024

Written By Campbell Mattinson
Mattinson review of Woods Crampton Buttery Chardonnay 2024.

Woods Crampton Buttery Chardonnay 2024
$12, 13% alcohol, screwcap, Limestone Coast.

After the runaway success of the Big Bear Californian Chardonnay 2022 through Aldi liquor channels here we have another contender in the same space, this time from Australia’s Limestone Coast region (in beautiful South Australia) and at the hand of the Woods Crampton crew, who have an excellent track record of delivering what wine drinkers want. My colleague Gary Walsh (at The Winefront) has already reviewed this with a score of 87/100, which might not sound high but is pretty decent given that we’re looking at a $12 wine.

The problem with these Buttery Chardonnay wines in general, in all honesty, is that despite the name, they’ve never really buttery enough. More butter please. To get genuine buttery richness you probably need higher grade grapes and oak to start with though, which is never going to happen at $12. That aside, in value terms, this wine gives the “best value buttery chardonnay in Australia” market a shake. It tastes of peach, mint, honeysuckle and cream, with a general kind of “butteriness” infused throughout. It’s fresh. It’s remains pretty crisp. It’s not rough. And it feels balanced. The value is 100% good.

Campbell Mattinson

This article was written by Campbell Mattinson, founder of The Winefront and mattinson, and former chief editor of Halliday.

When you pick up a wine book and see thousands of top-scoring wines, it’s hard to know which wine to choose. Mattinson guides you through this maze, giving you an honest view of the best Australian wines, the best wine stories, the best wine producers, the best value wines and simply, the best tasting wines. Importantly, Mattinson will tell you about the top-rated wines and also about the underrated wines. In short, Mattinson knows Australian wines inside and out.

Mattinson has been a photo-journalist since 1987. For the past 25 years he’s been a voice that you can trust when you’re looking for the best wines. He’s the only Australian to have won the Australian Wine Communicator of the Year Award more than once. He’s a past winner of a Louis Roederer International Wine Media Award, and is the author of the award-winning book The Wine Hunter. He’s not afraid to put a score beside a wine. But what he’d rather do, is tell you the wine’s story.

https://www.campbellmattinson.com
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