Medium-light golden yellow; honeyed, slightly buttery, apple and tropical fruit aroma with floral notes and hints of ginger and honeysuckle; medium-full body; fleshy, apple and stone fruit flavors with a slight hint of sweetness and a slightly creamy mouthfeel; lingering aftertaste. Highly recommended.

The 2016 Chardonnay Avant is laced with hints of lemon peel, white flowers and orchard fruit. This refreshing, mid-weight Chardonnay offers tons of personality and quality for a very fair price. There is so much to like here.

The value-priced 2016 Chardonnay Vintners Reserve comes all from coastal sites and was brought up in a mix of French and American oak, 11% being new. It offers a clean, balanced, undeniably delicious profile of white peach and orchard fruits, with subtle spice and honeyed notes with time in the glass. It’s textured, balanced, and easy drinking, and is perfect for a house white. Drink it over the coming year or two.

Time to load up, for it's been 95% barrel-fermented and exploits a creamy palate and finish. All chardonnay from Monterey (47%), Santa Barbara (30%), Mendocino (22%) and Sonoma (1%) is done up sur lie and aged five months in older French and US oak with 11% of it new. Good integration of off-dry tropical flavours on the mid-palate with vanilla and cream, followed by slight oak nuances in the finish. A key example of a winemaker's wine blend: consistent from year to year. With a plastic cork there is no need to store – drink as you buy. 88 points.

The 2016 Chardonnay (Sonoma Coast) is one of the more tightly wound wines in this range today. Stylistically, the Sonoma Coast Chardonnay is built on persistence, depth and structure, rather than overt fruit.

Here’s a creamy chardonnay stylized into a pleasantly sweet confection, its pale fruit, scents of hay and touches of oak combining in a white to chill for aperitifs.

Offers flavors of apple, pear and allspice, with oaky overtones.

This robust wine offers oaky overtones to the flavors of apple, pear and allspice. Finishes with notes of dried mint and cardamom.

This unoaked Chardonnay is powered by tangy lemon and pineapple flavors. It’s medium-bodied and has nice concentration without seeming overly ripe. Butter and vanilla touches weave through its lively fresh fruit notes.

The 2015 Chardonnay Avant is soft, open-knit and easy to drink. Candied lemon peel, pineapple white flowers and sweet spice give the wine much of its immediacy. The Avant is done entirely in stainless steel, with partially blocked malolactic fermentation to keep the flavors bright.

This pale yellow colored Chardonnay opens with a mild lemon and almond bouquet. On the palate, this wine is medium bodied, slightly acidic, yet round in the mouth. The flavor profile is a lemon and yellow grapefruit blend with notes stone fruit, almond and a dash of white pepper. The finish is dry and its flavors and gentle acidity fade away nicely. This Chard is a fresh option to consider on a hot summer day. Pair with a grilled mahi-mahi sandwich. 88 points. Very good.

88 points.

Kendall-Jackson's flagship 2015 Chardonnay Vintner's Reserve is a model of consistency. Soft, supple and open-knit, with lovely tropical fruit, white flower and butter notes, the Vintner's Select is a pretty wine to drink over the next 2-3 years.

Any vintner hoping to crack the U.S. premium market in a big way should study this remarkably successful product. It's the American fine-wine palate in a nutshell, worthy of an article in the Harvard Business Review. K-J Vintner's Reserve Chardonnay succeeds with remarkable consistency: boldly ripe and flavourful, vaguely sweet yet essentially dry - a mouthfilling white that drinks like a red (two wines in one!). The 2015 is rounder than a cueball, dense with suggestions of pineapple, syrupy peach, honey, toasted nuts and caramel. Well made, especially given the huge output, and impressively balanced for the style. If California's your go-to wine region, you are likely to love it, though one could argue it's more sugar-tuned for American palates than for most Canadians or Europeans.

There are two million cases (basically the equivalent of 100,000 barrels, and all hand stirred) of the 2015 Chardonnay Vintner’s Reserve. Eighty percent of this wine comes from the estate vineyards, most of them in Monterey, but to a lesser extent, in Santa Barbara, Mendocino and Sonoma. It goes through 100% barrel fermentation, with the breakdown on the barrels 44% French (5% new) and 53% American wood (8% new). It is bottled after seven months to preserve its exuberant fruit characteristics, which readers will find in its round, delicious, ripe peach, delicate honeysuckle and tropical fruit notes. It is a medium-bodied, crisp, amazing Chardonnay. With some two million cases, I’m sure some retailers will stock it in warmer areas of their stores, but when you can find pristine bottles, this wine does deliver. It has only one gram per liter of residual sugar, which destroys the false narrative of its critics that it’s very sweet. It is actually quite dry.

Kendall-Jackson helped define the buttery oaky Chardonnay movement, and this bottling plays that card quite strongly. Oak meets with roasted nuts, sea salt, pecan brittle and Gravenstein apple on the nose. The rounded palate shows sandalwood, candied walnuts and chamomile, though oak is very prominent as well.

Rich fig and smoky oak notes fold together in this full-bodied effort. The fruit is ripe and tilts toward pear, melon and apple flavors, while the oak adds a nice touch. Ends clean and pure.

Clean, pure aromas of honeysuckle, honeydew, light oak and baking spices give this lots of energy and a persistent aftertaste. The texture shows a touch of pithy citrus skin.

The 2014 Chardonnay Jackson Estate Seco Highlands, from vineyards in Monterey, presents an exotic, aromatically intense profile that is typical of the Rued clone that makes up most of the blend. This is an unusually aromatic, tropical style of Chardonnay. The 75% new French oak is deftly balanced, but there is no question this is an exotic, unusual style.

Smooth and fresh with generous citrus and apple fruit; bright, juicy and balanced.

The 2014 Chardonnay Vintner's Reserve is very nicely done in this vintage. Sweet, barrel-infused notes meld into a core of rich fruit in this generous, inviting Chardonnay. All the elements fall into place in the oily, voluptuous Chardonnay that captures the essence of the Kendall-Jackson style.

Quite remarkable are the nearly 3 million cases of the 2014 Chardonnay Vintner’s Reserve, which emerges 49% from Monterey, 31% Santa Barbara, 13% Mendocino and 7% Sonoma, with 95% barrel fermented and 100% going through malolactic fermentation. The wine is aged in French and American oak, with monthly lees stirring, which must be absolutely astonishing given the quantity of wine. This is the real deal, and while there are still those who think big is bad, the Jackson family has proved time and time again that high-quality winemaking, in this case from wine-master Randy Ullom (who has been with Kendall-Jackson as long as I’ve been tasting there), oversees an impressive team to put this wine together. The 2014 offers notes of honeysuckle, poached pear, delicate pineapple and papaya in a medium-bodied, surprisingly fresh, lively style, with the oak pushed way to the background. This is a serious Chardonnay, which I know must be hard for many elitists to suffer, but it is the real deal.

Nicely done in an oaky style, with toast and smoke notes holding the upper hand over white peach and nectarine flavors. Drink now. 12,293 cases made.

This blend of Monterey and Santa Barbara county vineyards offers fresh aromas of lemon-lime soda, chives and a hint of smoke. The palate is framed around sour-sweet green apple, with more bitterness and tension coming from green pear flesh and citrus pith.

Honey, roasted almonds, dried pears and tropical fruits are laced throughout the 2013 Chardonnay Grand Reserve. This is a decidedly overt, racy Chardonnay from vineyards in Monterey and Santa Barbara.