Stand back folks, we're not sure how big this one is going to get, but it's already the most expensive Chardonnay in history.
When it comes to the best Chardonnays, one word springs to mind: Burgundy. And Burgundy means money, but you really have no idea exactly how much.
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The home of Chardonnay, Burgundy has always been lauded for its whites and they have always reflected that cachet in their price tags. That's a big deal in a region and a world where red wine rules. Or does it? This year's list of the world's best Chardonnays suggests that, in Burgundy at least, white wine is beginning to compete with its red sibling when it comes to how much people are willing to spend on it. In fact, our top wine this year is a record-breaker.
Leroy's Domaine d'Auvenay Chevalier-Montrachet is currently sitting at a shade less than $31,000 a bottle, a global average price that no other white has ever matched. Sure, there have been individual wines sold at auction for more than that, but no wine has managed that level across all vintages. What's even more astonishing is that most of its vertiginous price rise has happened in the space of a year.
Five years ago, the wine's global average price was $3031. As recently as April this year it was sitting at $9042 a bottle. Since then it has more than tripled in price and now sits at $30,946 – that's not a typo – and it is only beaten for price by one other wine, the Leroy Musigny, which currently sits at a global average price of $40,467. The Chevalier-Montrachet is currently the second most expensive wine on earth. That's some going for a Chardonnay, especially one that didn't even crack the top 10 most expensive wines last year.
For some perspective, the wine traditionally referred to as the world's most expensive – DRC – is now about $7000 a bottle cheaper than our top Chardonnay. Looking at this year's list, it's hard not to be impressed at how many have increased in price, but they have also increased in quality – quite substantially, as we shall see from the list below.
Let's get the rules out of the way first. You'll notice on some of the lists that the wines do not appear to be ranked in numerical order, according to scores, but trust us, they are. For example, Domaine d'Auvenay's Gouttes d'Or, with a score of 97 is seemingly outscored by two 96-pointers.
These apparent anomalies occur because we weight the aggregated critic score according to how many scores each wine has received. So, a wine with an aggregated score of 95 points across 100 reviews will be rated higher than one with a score of 95 across 50 reviews. Similarly, wines with an ostensibly higher score across a lower number of reviews will not be ranked as high.
And finally, we have added more critics in the last 12 months, so this year's "best of" series will be more comprehensive than ever.
The World's Best Chardonnays on Wine-Searcher:| Wine Name | Score | Ave Price | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Leroy Domaine d'Auvenay Chevalier-Montrachet Grand Cru | 98 | $30,946 | |
| Leroy Domaine d'Auvenay Criots-Bâtard-Montrachet Grand Cru | 97 | $23,476 | |
| Coche-Dury Corton-Charlemagne Grand Cru | 96 | $6536 | |
| Domaine des Comtes Lafon Montrachet Grand Cru | 96 | $3025 | |
| Leroy Domaine d'Auvenay Les Gouttes d'Or | 97 | $10,822 | |
| Domaine Marc Colin et Fils Montrachet Grand Cru | 96 | $1027 | |
| Peter Michael Point Rouge Chardonnay, Sonoma County | 96 | $490 | |
| Kongsgaard The Judge Chardonnay, Napa Valley | 95 | $860 | |
| Domaine Leflaive Chevalier-Montrachet Grand Cru | 95 | $1277 | |
| Aubert Wines Lauren Vineyard Chardonnay, Sonoma Coast | 95 | $240 |
Let's take a closer look at those scores, for a moment. Last year, when we ran this list, two wines had scores of 96 and the rest sat at 95. This year, here are twice as many 96-pointers, but also a 98 and two 97s – only three wines have aggregated critic scores of 95. That's quite a level of score inflation in a short time.
Now some of that can be attributed to our new critics, but also to improved wines. For the Domaine d'Auvenay wine, you have to go back to the 2005 vintage to find an aggregated score as "low" as 95. Even the tricky 2013 vintage is rated a 97, while a couple of vintages (2015 and 2016) are rated by critics as 100-point wines.
The list might be dominated by Burgundy, but there is – like last year – a trio of California wines bravely holding their own. The Aubert joins its compatriots this year (taking over from the Marcassin Estate Chardonnay) to hold up America's end of the conversation. The Aubert wine also has a refreshingly – relatively – sane price, too, at $240, although even that's up 15 percent in the past year from $204.
The future of Chardonnay as a top-end wine is most assuredly secure, but the big question is how long can those top wines keep accelerating in price? Common sense says they can't, but common sense also said the global average prices for top Burgundy would never top $20,000 and yet here we are.
In the long run, the equation seems simple: as long as there are people willing to pay the price, Burgundy will always be dominated not by red or white, Pinot Noir or Chardonnay, but by ever-increasing sums of money.
