Announcing another outstanding Cape Mentelle with an immense future before it. Epic poise meets understated generosity, clocking in at a refreshing 13.5% alcohol. The complexity on display this year is mind-boggling: within its signature frame of blackcurrants, high cocoa dark chocolate and cedar come nuances of coal, even black olives, hovering with haunting persistence. High […]

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The Australian Wine Industry’s most prestigious award, the 2012 McWilliam’s Maurice O’Shea Award, was last night awarded to the Australian Screwcap Initiative.

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I’ve always felt that Central Otago’s inherent acidity never sits quite as harmoniously in Felton’s Dry Riesling as it does in its sweeter renditions, yet the vintage from the gods has blessed it with an internal balance like it has not seen before. This is a precisely crafted riesling that presents fruit intensity within an […]

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It’s as if the 2012 season has amplified the mineral expression in Felton Road, infusing this riesling with a deep-set mineral backbone that provides textural definition, direction and drive. Outside the hallowed Grand Crus of Germany and Alsace, it’s a rare thing for a sweet riesling to be so profoundly scaffolded around its mineral structure, […]

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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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