Chardonnay vs Sauvignon Blanc: What Is the Difference?

Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc are the two white wines everybody has heard of, and they are opposites in one important way. Sauvignon Blanc tastes the same wherever it grows: green, zesty, loud. Chardonnay tastes like whatever the winemaker wants, from lean and stony to rich and buttery. That is why people say they hate Chardonnay and then love one, and why Sauvignon Blanc fans rarely change their mind. Here is the difference, and which one to buy for what.

Table of Contents

1. The short version
2. Why Chardonnay changes and Sauvignon Blanc does not
3. The Australian angle
4. What to buy
5. Which one for dinner
6. Frequently asked questions

The short version

	Chardonnay	Sauvignon Blanc
Smells of	Apple, pear, citrus, stone fruit; with oak, butter, toast, nuts	Passionfruit, gooseberry, cut grass, capsicum, lime
Feel in the mouth	Medium to full, round, sometimes creamy	Light, sharp, zingy
Acidity	Medium to high	High
Oak	Often, and it changes everything	Rarely
Style range	Enormous	Narrow
Home ground	Burgundy (Chablis, Meursault, Champagne)	Loire (Sancerre) and Bordeaux
New World star	Australia (Margaret River, Yarra, Adelaide Hills)	New Zealand (Marlborough)
Best Australian regions	Margaret River, Yarra Valley, Adelaide Hills, Tasmania, Mornington	Adelaide Hills, Margaret River (blended with Semillon), Tasmania
Ages?	Good ones, five to fifteen years	Drink within two years
Serve at	10 to 12°C; not ice cold	6 to 8°C; cold

Why Chardonnay changes and Sauvignon Blanc does not

Chardonnay is a fairly neutral grape. Left alone, it tastes of apple and citrus and not much else, which sounds like a weakness and is actually its strength: it takes on whatever you do to it. Ferment it in oak barrels and it picks up toast and vanilla. Let the second, softening fermentation happen (winemakers call it malolactic) and the sharp apple acid turns into a creamy, buttery one. Stir the dead yeast through it and it gets richer and nuttier. Skip all that, grow it somewhere cold and put it in steel, and you get Chablis, which is lean, stony and tastes nothing like the buttery Chardonnay of the 1990s. Same grape.

Sauvignon Blanc, by contrast, has a strong personality that comes from the grape itself. Compounds in the skins (the same family that gives capsicum its smell) produce the green, grassy, passionfruit notes, and they show up whether the wine is made in the Loire, Marlborough or the Adelaide Hills. Oak mostly gets in the way, so almost nobody uses it. The result is a wine that is reliably fresh, sharp and aromatic, and that is what its fans want: no surprises.

The Australian angle

Chardonnay is the country’s biggest white grape and the one Australia does best. The rich, oaky style of the 1990s gave it a bad name (“anything but Chardonnay”), and the industry answered by making it leaner, fresher and more like white Burgundy. Margaret River, the Yarra Valley and the Adelaide Hills now make Chardonnay that competes with anything from France at a third of the price, and Tasmania and the Mornington Peninsula are close behind. Tyrrell’s in the Hunter released the first commercial Australian Chardonnay in 1971, which started the whole thing.

Sauvignon Blanc in Australia lives in the shadow of Marlborough across the Tasman, which sells more of it here than every Australian region combined. The Adelaide Hills makes the best local version, a little softer and less pungent than Marlborough, and Margaret River blends it with Semillon into the crisp, grassy SSB that is Western Australia’s summer wine. The Adelaide Hills gets its own section in our South Australian regions guide.

What to buy

Prices are Dan Murphy’s shelf prices on 9 September 2026 and will move about; BWS stocks many of the same names.

Wine	Price band	Why
Nepenthe Altitude Sauvignon Blanc	About $15 to $19	Adelaide Hills; passionfruit and lime, the Australian answer to Marlborough
Taylors Estate Sauvignon Blanc	About $17	Clare Valley; softer, a good all-rounder
Cape Mentelle Marri or Xanadu Fusion Chardonnay	About $17 to $22	Margaret River at an entry price; the modern lean style
Bird in Hand Sauvignon Blanc	About $26	The Adelaide Hills style at its most polished
Vasse Felix Filius Chardonnay	About $27	The wine that shows why Margaret River Chardonnay is famous
Yering Station Yarra Chardonnay	About $25 to $30	Cool-climate Yarra; grapefruit, white peach, gentle oak
Shaw and Smith Sauvignon Blanc	About $36	The benchmark Australian Sauvignon Blanc
Shaw and Smith M3 or Cape Mentelle Chardonnay	About $45 to $55	Serious Chardonnay that ages; the ones to compare with Burgundy

Our Chardonnay guide and Sauvignon Blanc guide cover each grape in full.

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Which one for dinner

Sauvignon Blanc is the wine for anything green, sharp or from the sea: goat’s cheese, asparagus, a salad with vinaigrette, oysters, prawns, Thai and Vietnamese food, fish and chips. Its acid cuts through and its green notes echo the herbs. Chardonnay is the wine for richer food: roast chicken, pork, creamy pasta, lobster, salmon, mushroom risotto, a soft cheese. A lean, unoaked Chardonnay can do most of Sauvignon Blanc’s jobs; a rich, oaked one wants butter and cream on the plate. Our guide to wine with pasta puts both to work.

Frequently asked questions