Halliday Top 100 Wines 2026: Best white wines over $40

Australian chardonnay has never been better, so it stands to reason that the grape would make up the lion’s share of this list of the 20 best Australian white wines over $40. 

Yet, with pinot grigio, fiano, riesling, roussanne, sauvignon blanc and vermentino also featuring, there is plenty of variety to be found here. 

Chosen by the Halliday Tasting Team for the 2026 Halliday Top 100, these 20 white wines are the best in their price bracket right now. And while there might not be a ceiling on that bracket, 80 per cent of the list ranges between $40 and $75.

BK Wines The Fall Single Vineyard Chardonnay 2024, Adelaide Hills

Green almond, nougat and the sweet scent of apple blossom. There's a harmony within that suggests gentle handling in the vineyard and winery; the acidity is far-reaching, like roads mapped over a city viewed from a great height. Green apple, lemon pudding with crème fraîche, white chocolate ganache, grapefruit pith and pistachio. A blistering salinity courses through, with elements of slate and broken quartz. Vitality with body, seduction by means of metronomic balance. – Katrina Butler

96 points | $70 | Diam | 12.8% alc. | BK Wines profile | Winery website | @bkwines

Brokenwood Oakey Creek Vineyard Chardonnay 2025, Hunter Valley

The fourth release from this vineyard, a 2.68ha parcel on a gentle south-facing slope. Hand picked and whole-bunch pressed with wild fermentation in French oak. The line of acidity running through this wine sets it apart from most other chardonnays of the '25 vintage. Highly sophisticated and aromatic with tight sweet-lemon fruit, fresh, detailed sulphides and attractive grapefruit pith. Super stylish and highly satisfying. – Toni Paterson MW

96+ points | $66 | Screw cap | 12.5% alc. | Brokenwood profile | Winery website | @brokenwoodwines

Canobolas Wines Chardonnay 2024, Orange

A calm and temperate vintage for Orange, this was picked over four non-consecutive days. From vines planted in '85 on red ferrosol soils. Indigenous yeast ferment, 50% mlf, matured for 11 months in 20% new oak and an additional seven months on lees in stainless steel tanks. The wine opens with crumbly bedrock, marigold and banksia. Its mineral core sweeps through with riverstone and licks of lemon salt. Citron is a constant thread throughout, with undulating waves of acidity and phenolic pomelo pith to finish. Power and drive now, but a bit more time in the bottle, and this will continue to unfurl. Another joyous wine from Canobolas. – Shanteh Wale

96+ points | $65 | Screw cap | 12.4% alc. | Canobolas Wines profile | Winery website | @canobolaswines

Evans & Tate Redbrook Estate Chardonnay 2023, Margaret River

At first, this classy wine is deceptive because it doesn’t reveal everything at once. It takes time to open, starting with a light spray of citrus, all pink grapefruit and Meyer lemon, with an even lighter flutter of smoky sulphides. In time, flavours build with spicy, cedary oak, all integrated, adding shape, too, with nougatine-like lees and mouth-watering acidity. The finish is long, and all up, this is a beauty. – Jane Faulkner

95+ points | $45 | Screw cap | 13.5% alc. | Evans & Tate profile | Winery website | @evansandtate

Fearon Fiano 2025, Geographe

The wine sees 12 hours' skin contact and then is pressed off to amphora for maturation. Wild fermented and bottled unfined and unfiltered. This has mettle and distinction. A textural feast in squeakiness and juicy feels. The fragrance is all about lime in mineral water, ginger and hazelnut. The palate delivers flavours of tonic water, ginger, green almond, nectarine and hazy green apple juice. It feels compelling, complex, layered and utterly delicious, with savouriness as a subtitle. A brilliant rendering of the variety. – Mike Bennie

95 points | $40 | Diam | 13% alc. | Fearon profile | Winery website | @fearon.wines

Frankland Estate Isolation Ridge Riesling 2025, Frankland River

You’d call this pristine. Beautiful, too. It’s everything you want in a riesling from this top producer, with fruit off its organically managed, exceptional vineyard. Delicate aromas of lemon blossom, quince and ginger flower with a more complex oyster shell character. Pure flavours of citrus, glacé lemon and a touch of phenolics and silky creaminess all cruising along the palate. There’s balance between texture and the vibrancy of superfine acidity. A slip of sweetness rounds out this superb wine. – Jane Faulkner

97 points | $65 | Screw cap | 12.5% alc. | Frankland Estate profile | Winery website | @franklandestate

Giant Steps Bastard Hill Chardonnay 2025, Yarra Valley

Planted in '87 in Gladysdale at 400m. This vineyard gets picked a full month after Tarraford and Sexton! This is the third and best wine Giant Steps has made from this cool site. A very bright green gold. Penetrating aromas of crushed rock, nashi pear, ruby grapefruit and orange blossom. It's pure and precise on the palate, with a saline acid line giving the wine structure and length. A special wine that will age effortlessly over the next decade. – Philip Rich

98 points | $95 | Screw cap | 13.2% alc. | Giant Steps profile | Winery website | @giantstepswine

Heritage Wines of Stanthorpe Whistling Kite Skin Contact Vermentino 2025, Granite Belt

The fruit spends two months on skins and is fermented in ceramic eggs. Quite a gentle impact of skin fermentation, resulting in pleasing, chalky texture and a general dryness that feels apt in the more vigorous lime-in-tonic-water characters, the tangle of grapefruit pulp and mandarin, the pucker of brown pear skin and the haze of cloudy green apple juice. Lots of perfume, good flavour, a bristling, energetic feel overall. A complex and compelling wine. – Mike Bennie

94 points | $65 | Screw cap | 10% alc. | Heritage Wines of Stanthorpe profile | Winery website | @heritageestatewines

L.A.S. Vino SBDB Sauvignon Blanc Dynamic Blend 2025, Margaret River

It’s sauvignon blanc but not as you know it. It’s a cracking offering and easily one of the finest. Nic Peterkin deftly crafts whites with texture, mouthfeel and plenty of personality. This merely hints at the variety, such is its restraint; just a whisper of the tropics, focusing more on citrus with pomelo, grapefruit and lemon with a dash of lime. It smells of the ocean in the early morning. It’s savoury, textural, yet full of energy, with fine acidity teasing out the palate. It has length, line and definition. Most of all, it is delicious. Drinkability writ large? Absolutely. – Jane Faulkner

96 points | $70 | Diam | 13% alc. | L.A.S. Vino profile | Winery website | @l.a.s.vino

Medhurst Estate Vineyard Chardonnay 2025, Yarra Valley

Matured in barriques and puncheons (30% new). A super floral wine with a bouquet of stone fruits, pink grapefruit, oyster shell minerality and a hint of spicy oak. The palate is gently textured and concentrated without being heavy. The finish is saline and long. Exceptional. Worth every cent and more. – Philip Rich

97+ points | $60 | Screw cap | 12.8% alc. | Medhurst profile | Winery website | @medhurstwines

Mulline Single Vineyard Sutherlands Creek Chardonnay 2025, Geelong

From a 10 000-vines-per-ha close-planted vineyard in the Moorabool Valley. Matured in 30% new French puncheons; 20% mlf. Very bright green gold. A step up in intensity yet with lower alcohol than the '24. The result is a complex and pure-fruited bouquet of white nectarine, jasmine and sea spray. Fills out beautifully on the medium-bodied, energetic and structured palate. A terrific wine that will need another six to 12 months to hit its straps but will continue to improve in the bottle for another five to seven years at least. – Philip Rich

97+ points | $65 | Screw cap | 12.5% alc. | Mulline profile | Winery website | @mullinevintners

Penfolds Yattarna Bin 144 Chardonnay 2024, Tumbarumba Adelaide Hills Tasmania

There's a recurring theme here. As is the norm, the new Yattarna release is a supremely focused, textural wine, leaving the drinker questioning how Penfolds manages to get so much complexity and flavour within that taut, mineral-laden framework. Citrus and white nectarine at its core, with hints of clover blossom, wet stone, soft spice, crème fraîche, crushed shells, grilled nuts, almond paste and apple turnover. Those fruit flavours are keenly poised on the palate, with a filigreed, harmonious composition and a long stretch of flavour. There's just a slip of phenolic texture and a swift mineral cadence that propels the wine forward. It really is a beautiful wine. – Dave Brookes

98 points | $220 | Screw cap | 12.5% alc. | Penfolds profile | Winery website | @penfolds

Quealy Winemakers Feri Maris Single Block Pinot Grigio 2025, Mornington Peninsula

Such a beautifully modulated wine and proof of how good the variety is. Of course, it helps that the fruit is off a certified organic site and loved both in the growing and the making of it. Whole-bunch pressed with 70% going to stainless steel and 30% to French hogsheads, half new, wild ferment, and on some light lees for six months. All that to say, this has texture and freshness by the bucketload. And flavour. A light spray of white florals and spice, especially ginger, lemon-infused pears, lemony curd lees and a whisper of nutty oak. The palate is caressed by texture and fine acidity. Lovely wine. – Jane Faulkner

96 points | $40 | Screw cap | 13% alc. | Quealy Winemakers profile | Winery website | @quealywines

Sailor Seeks Horse Huldufolk Chardonnay 2024, Tasmania

A stunning chardonnay. Clones 96 and 277 from Paul and Gilli Lipscombe at Sailor Seeks Horse in the Huon Valley. It's beautifully composed; all detail, drive and tension with umami-veiled citrus and stone fruits riding rails of minerally precision with impressive sustain and clarity. White peach, green apple, lemon and grapefruit with almond and clover blossom, crushed riverstone, nuanced nutty oak, lightly spiced oatmeal, almond paste and a curl of struck flint in the background. It's so comfortable in its own skin, with a subtle glutamic ache, a mineral-laden, crystalline acidity and a long draw of softly spiced stone and citrus fruits. An absolute banger. – Dave Brookes

97 points | $120 | Screw cap | 13.2% alc. | Sailor Seeks Horse profile | Winery website | @sailorseekshorse

Savaterre Chardonnay 2024, Beechworth

Here is the art of winemaker laid bare, in all of its beauty as well as mystery. It's a slow reveal, all the better to take in a wine both plush in fruit and fine in structure, citrusy fresh and oak defined, savoury influenced and varietally pure. Complex, tangy fresh aromas arrive Beechworth-bright before leading into a tightly packed, concentrated palate of lemon citrus, grapefruit, stone fruits and toasted almonds creamily textured with honeysuckle aromatics. A suitable ending with saline cut and grip on the long finish. – Jeni Port

97 points | $120 | Screw cap | 13.5% alc. | Savaterre profile | Winery website | @savaterre

Shaw + Smith Lenswood Vineyard Chardonnay 2024, Adelaide Hills

A magic-moment kind of wine. Scintillating acidity, a gentle, savoury underbelly, crisp stone fruit and green apple characters, a distinct weave of saline minerality with touches of fino sherry and preserved lemon freshness. Add in nougat and ginger snap biscuit, but all of that with an immense sense of fruit purity, too. Savoury, serious, vivid and refreshing in the same breath. A tour de force of chardonnay. Brilliant. – Mike Bennie

97 points | $100 | Screw cap | 12.5% alc. | Shaw + Smith profile | Winery website | @shawandsmith

Sidewood Estate Owen's Chardonnay 2024, Adelaide Hills

A deeply beguiling release of Owen's. It boasts a brilliant and prismatic palate of white peach, nectarine and nutmeg spice. Toasted almond and tarragon. The texture and volume here are dialled up, yet precision and balance are the true cornerstones. Expect a little flinty struck match, plenty of tension, but also generosity of fruit, ripples of lemon curd and currents of salinity, all coursing through with great intent. – Katrina Butler

97 points | $70 | Screw cap | 12.5% alc. | Sidewood Estate profile | Winery website | @sidewoodestate

Stoney Rise Holyman Chardonnay 2025, Tasmania

Joe Holyman is nailing it with chardonnay at the moment, here from his home estate in Gravelly Beach in the Upper Tamar. It's a wonderfully composed wine that opens with grapefruit, white peach and citrus fruit, with gentle barrel spice, crushed shells, olive brine, shortbread, almond meal, clover blossom and meadow flowers. On the palate, it delivers a beautiful core of fruit, a sapid, saline mineral cadence and a chalky textural arc of travel, with nuance, detail and clarity throughout. Umami in spades on the back end, too, along with daubs of crème fraîche, lemon zest and stone. Dang, it's good. – Dave Brookes

96+ points | $70 | Screw cap | 12.5% alc. | Stoney Rise profile | Winery website | @stoneyrise_wine

Yangarra Estate Vineyard Roux Beaute Roussanne 2024, McLaren Vale

66% of the final blend was fermented and kept on skins for four months in 675L ceramic eggs, with the residual whole-bunch pressed to eggs. Unlike the '23, which required coaxing from the glass to reveal its secrets, this leaps forth. Not brashly, that is not its way, but with elegant certainty. The Estate Roussanne from ’24 is a more effusive affair, while this is stony and mineral, yet still with fruitful depth and power. Orchard fruits, apples, pears, peaches – heirloom of feel – green almond, sage, raw quince, green tea, coriander seeds and dried Persian lime. Pithy, tangy, chewy, such a treasure trove for texture seekers; this is another impeccable release for this groundbreaking wine. Brilliant, and the value for this quality and character is extraordinary. – Marcus Ellis

97+ points | $65 | Screw cap | 14% alc. | Yangarra Estate Vineyard profile | Winery website | @yangarraestate

Yarra Yering Carrodus Chardonnay 2024, Yarra Valley

50/50% original 1969 plantings/Crecy block; 20% new oak. There's a purity of fruit here that doesn't exist in the other two Yarra Yering chardonnays from '24. Focused, with white pear and peach aromas alongside subtle and complex marine scents. The palate is concentrated yet superbly balanced, with a very fine vein of acidity running through the wine. A superb wine now and one for the cellar. Not sure I've tasted a better chardonnay from Sarah Crowe and the team at Yarra Yering. – Philip Rich

98+ points | $190 | Screw cap | 13.5% alc. | Yarra Yering profile | Winery website | @yarra_yering