The natural acidity of this season has risen to propel this forward as one of the great nobles from the riesling masters of Marlborough. A beautiful precision begins in its brilliant, pale straw hue and carries through aromas and flavours of vibrant lemon zest, golden delicious apple and fleshy white peach of intricately primary fruit […]

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Auburn’s 2012s are coming next month, and with a production of less than 300 dozen in total across the entire range of seven rieslings, you’ll need to get in very, very fast. From a north-facing slope in the warmest part of Central Otago, there’s a generosity to this wine in layers of golden delicious apples, […]

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The hallmark of Auburn, uniting its rieslings from all parts of Central Otago, is a house style of consistent acid definition, always drawing the finish in clean and balanced, regardless of the level of sweetness of the cuvée in question. Never has this been more marked than in the pristine 2012 season, a vintage that […]

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With a production of 870 bottles, this is one of the larger production wines for a brand described more as a passionate hobby than a profitable business by its owners. Their fanaticism is evident in every riesling they make, exemplified in an impeccable balance of acidity and sweetness. Painstaking avoidance of botrytis-affected fruit makes this […]

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Shining Dawn announces the dawning of a new era in New Zealand riesling. I doubt the country has ever seen a wine quite like this. Indeed, it should not be possible. With a sweetness of 320g/L and an acidity of 17.3g/L (double that of many dessert wines), the Auburn crew repeated the measurements in disbelief […]

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Blair Walter understands his vineyards and wines more intimately than anyone I know in Central Otago, and it’s rare for him to be lost for words in explaining anything. Yet even he can’t account for the unprecedented mineral expression of Block 1 in the pristine 2012 season. This is a riesling at once deeply chalky, […]

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At an unctuous 322g/L of sweetness, very few dessert wines of such proportions are able to get through fermentation without developing the telltale off-characters of stressed out yeast. BDG is amazingly clean and pure in spite of its figures, which must be credited to proprietor Dave Paterson’s experience with making ice wine in Canada’s Okanagan […]

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The sheer brilliance of engineering that Pegasus Bay brings to botrytis riesling is something to behold. By some form of unspoken magic, they manage to take fruit of concentration of epic proportions and rampant energy and pull it into an impeccably honed and tightly poised finish. Butter-like smoothness is somehow married with taut, citrus zest […]

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Pegasus has crafted a mesmerising noble that skilfully negotiates the precarious balance between luscious generosity and taut, lively acidity. The complexity packed in here is mind-blowing, capturing every stone fruit and all manner of citrus, along with pear, baked apple, fig and spices of every kind. The seamless confidence with which it delivers such a […]

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Delicately poised granny smith apples, lime zest and lemon blossom are faithfully captured in a clean fruit profile that lingers long with pepper and kaffir lime zest, carried by impressive acid poise and fruit energy. Sweetness is impeccably restrained, allowing the finish to linger crisp and clean. $20 at Wine Online.

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