2016 Leeuwin Estate Art Series Chardonnay Margaret River Australia 750 ml

A Chardonnay with the Precision of a Swiss Watch

Beyond the Blue Chip Chardonnays of Burgundy—wines like Comtes Lafon, Ramonet, Coche-Dury, and Romanée-Conti—one Chardonnay is a mainstay among the world’s best: Leeuwin Estate Art Series from Margaret River, Australia. The 2016 vintage earned a stunning 97-point score from Decanter, where it rated as one of their Best Chardonnays Outside Burgundy—and left the top California wines in the dust.

This is a collector’s dream: a true iconic white wine that, year in and year out, challenges the best of Burgundy at a fraction of the price.

The Art Series Chardonnay has never earned a higher score from Decanter than the newly-released 2016—it even bested last year’s wine, which placed #38 on Wine Spectator’s Top 100. Gloriously golden, showing pineapple and fresh lemon alongside toasted notes, herbs, and vanilla, this is a world-class white that delivers on every accolade it has ever received. Infinitely pleasing now and built to last, the Art Series Chardonnay belongs alongside the showpiece white wines in your cellar—yes, we're talking about the top-flight Montrachets and Meursaults that likely cost several times as much.

Located a stone’s throw from the Indian Ocean in one of the most remote wine regions in the world, Leeuwin Estate has been setting Australia’s white wine standard for decades. To grasp its importance, consider that Decanter recently staged a retrospective tasting of three decades of this “true classic among Australian Chardonnays,” and Langton’s—Australia’s most prestigious wine guide—named the Art Series one of their “Heritage Five,” making it the only white among wines like Penfold’s Grange and Henschke’s Hill of Grace.

To many, this comes as no surprise, because everything that Leeuwin does is geared toward maximizing quality. Yields are kept to a minimum so that small bunches retain tremendously concentrated fruit, and the care that Leeuwin applies to the grapes is in their motto: “Treat ‘em like eggs.” Australia’s leading critic, James Halliday, has called Leeuwin Estate, “a class act…[that works] with the precision of a Swiss watch. It stands at the very forefront of estate-based, family-owned wineries.”

In the 2016 vintage, this resulted in an Art Series Chardonnay that has never been bested: a 97-point classic that Decanter praised as “markedly floral,” “succulent,” with a “lovely lithe mouthfeel and beautiful harmony.” Showing tropical fruit alongside fresh lemon and citrus, rounded out by toasted almond, flint, baking spice, wild herbs, and vanilla. This wine is only poised to improve, as Australian wine authority James Halliday has noted, writing that older vintages of the Art Series can be “reminiscent of top Meursault.”

Praise for Chardonnay doesn’t get any higher than that. This is your chance to claim one of the world’s iconic white wines, one that invites comparisons to the most celebrated and expensive wines in the world. We’re one of the first to market with this 97-point vintage. Don’t delay.