2017 Xanadu Wines DJL Chardonnay Margaret River Australia

Exclusive Dream Deal on an All-Time Favorite

There’s only one place outside of Australia you can find Xanadu’s straw-hued, mineral-driven 2017 Chardonnay, a sleek, crisp exemplar of Margaret River verve—and that’s right here at Wine Access.

In line with Xanadu’s sterling record of critical hits over the past decade, this “elegantly composed” bottle won 95 points from James Halliday while Decanter awarded 94 points, praising it as “a lip-smacking Chardonnay” that’s “racy and intense with saline minerality.” Those scores put this golden white in line with bottles triple the price, and a race for the last bottles all but emptied the Xanadu cellar. Luckily, Wine Access members have long declared their love for this stellar Aussie white and we were first in line for every case in the U.S. 

What’s really put Xanadu in the class of all-time Wine Access customer favorites is the case-buy-friendly pricing. In this respect, the 2017 outdoes even its predecessors. Today, we’re offering this precise Australian white, perfumed with white nectarine and lemon and fresh as salt spray on the palate, at $25 per bottle — even lower than the 2016 vintage.

“This is much more akin to the style of white Burgundy with that flinty matchstick precision than rich California style,” Master Sommelier Sur Lucero told us at HQ, ranking it in the hallowed company of Margaret River’s Vasse Felix and Mornington Peninsula’s Kooyong. It’s a good thing we secured exclusive rights to this 95-point, under-$30 Margaret River Chardonnay—otherwise there’d be precious little to go around in the first place.

Like Napa, Australia’s Margaret River is a relatively youthful player on the world stage that has quickly mounted muscular competition to the long-established châteaux of Bordeaux. Both New World hotspots captured the prescient imagination of one of America’s most legendary winemakers: Robert Mondavi, who was so convinced of Margaret River’s world-class potential in the early 1970s that he flirted with buying property. Although he resisted in the end, Mondavi did mentor a pair of legendary Margaret River estates, whose prestige today proves that his hunch about the region was dead-on.

In the center of Margaret River lies Xanadu, a winery in the remote region whose name has become synonymous with luscious Chardonnays. Dr. John Lagan and his wife Eithne planted their first Cabernet Sauvignon and Semillon near the coast in 1997; the Xanadu property now has over 200 acres of vines planted in well-drained gravelly soils. Acquired by the Rathbone family in 2005, Xanadu has remainedfamily-owned and obsessively quality-focused, as evidenced by the estate’s expansive roster of trophies and gold medals, and 90+ point scores from critics the world over. 

• Fruit Intensity
• Oak Intensity
• Body
• Sweetness
• Acidity

• ABV 13.00%
• 30 mins
• Drink Up
• 100% Chardonnay
• Serving temperature – 45°
• Screw cap