Welcome to our last newsletter before Christmas. We hope this missive finds you winding down after a successful year, or at least vibing on the madness and drinking some good wine when you get a chance.
First things first, and we’ve been saying it for a while, is to make sure that you get in there with your tickets to Riesling Riot, the grand public tasting that is the centrepiece of the triennial Riesling Downunder program. It’s all kicking off in the first week of February, and there’s an unbelievable cast of Riesling superstars coming over – not people to stand in awe of, but people to chat with and learn more about their land and passion while tasting their invigoratingly pure juice. Do come – full details here.
Plenty of other news in the meantime. Let’s carry on with the Riesling theme, why don’t we? Frankland Estate has been rightly hailed by Mike Bennie as “one of Australia’s greatest producers”, and you can find out why by checking out Mike’s article from Gourmet Traveller WINE. Another Riesling star is F.X. Pichler of the Wachau. The estate’s 2016 Kellerberg couldn’t be bettered with a 100-point score from U.S. critic James Suckling. We actually have limited stocks of the ’13, ’14, ’15 and newly landed ’16 available – an outstanding set from Lucas Pichler. Staying in the Wachau, we’re really excited to introduce, for the first time, single-vineyard Federspiel wines from Domäne Wachau. These are extremely precise expressions of site in a mid-weight, mid-priced guise. The ones we’ve gone for are the Bruck vineyard in Spitz for Riesling, and Kaiserberg in Dürnstein for Grüner Veltliner. And the Grüner joy from ’16 doesn’t end there –Emmerich Knoll, Bründlmayer and F.X. Pichler are all in on the action.
In European red news we have Pinot Noir from Huber in Baden and Heymann-Löwenstein in Mosel (yep, that’s right!), plus a Blaufränkisch and blend from Rosi Schuster in Burgenland
Closer to home, Cullen’s Kevin John is gorgeous again, Nick Farr’s on fire from top to toe of the range, Stephen Pannell has a picnic-tastic Grenache out and the Flowerdays of TWR are enjoying an age of classic refinement.
Thanks for your interest and support in 2017 – we wish you a very merry Christmas and a brilliant New Year.
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