Meadowbank's relationship with Riesling dates to the very beginning, when the Estate’s very first vines were planted in a quiet corner of the Derwent Valley. Over the years, this vineyard has produced some of Tasmania’s finest Rieslings and consistently received high praise from wine critics.

Meadowbank’s Riesling continues its remarkable run of form, following the critically acclaimed 2023 and award-winning 2024 vintage. The 2025 release lives up to that pedigree. Crafted from two vineyard parcels—Maccies Block and Top Wool Shed—the winemaking combines stainless steel fermentation for purity with old French oak for subtle texture. The result is a beautifully balanced wine where bright, zesty acidity meets a gentle touch of residual sugar. Fresh, layered, and irresistibly drinkable, it’s a Riesling of both precision and charm.

2025 saw another warm and dry year which, alongside well-maintained vine vigour and good vine health, allowed the Swinney team to harvest 1-2 weeks earlier than avaerage. The fruit was pristine and intensely concentrated: a winemakers dream.

The first key to understanding Swinney’s Riesling style is to appreciate the farming. All blocks are organic and dry-farmed, the vines are cane-pruned and the row orientation is north to south. The team uses shade cloth in the Riesling blocks, protecting the bunches from excessive sun exposure and avoiding any roasted character in the fruit. Such precise vineyard management goes some way to explaining the wine’s purity and transparency.

The second key is in the cellar, where Rob Manns’s search for structure and texture reigns supreme. The fruit (from two of Swinney’s oldest blocks in the Powderbark vineyard) is whole bunch-pressed and fermented with indigenous yeast in stainless steel with a high component of solids. This approach “builds nuance and a saline core in the wine”, according to Mann. He’s not looking for austerity, rather he is seeking something more textural and aromatic with flavour complexity and a high degree of fruit purity.

This Riesling comes from three clones on the Estate block. The vines were hand-harvested, destemmed and pressed into monolithic 650L cement eggs for fermentation with full solids. At the end of ferment, the wine and lees went into large stockinger foudre for two years to mellow out. It was bottled without fining or filtration.

Biodynamic. The Théo Riesling comes exclusively from the monopole Le Clos des Capucins—a vineyard that takes its name from the Capuchin friars who arrived in the area in 1619—at the base of the celebrated Schlossberg hill. The Clos is well protected from winds by the surrounding hills and walls. The soils are sand, alluvial pebbles and granitic gravel. The low-cropping vines typically offer up a supple and pithy Riesling that is wonderfully accessible when young—a reflection of these sandy soils. As with all Weinbach dry Rieslings, this was pressed as whole bunches, fermented without any yeast additions, and matured in very old oak casks for, in this case, 10 months. It’s a thoroughbred Cuvée Theo: long, taut and intense. 

Biodynamic. The Schlossberg hill has long been revered as one of the world’s most outstanding Riesling vineyards. It’s a granitic outcrop that rises north of Kaysersberg and Kientzheim to an altitude of 230 to 350 metres. The quality of Schlossberg’s wines was established as early as the 15th century, and this was the first vineyard in Alsace to receive Grand Cru status in 1975. With their eight hectares, the Faller family are the largest landowners in Schlossberg. They make an extraordinary series of Rieslings from the hill, parcellated and bottled according to vine age and altitude.

This wine is from three of the family’s highest parcels of vines at the top of the slope (between 320 and 420 metres). The soils are shallow and rocky—very mineral—with eroded granite with a reddish tinge and a high magnesium content. This potent combination of altitude, low-vigour soils and paltry yields results in a deep, dry, mineral Riesling with intense freshness to balance the wine’s flesh. Twenty years will not weary it.

Organic. This tremendous Riesling comes from the renowned Bürgergarten vineyard on the lower slopes of the Haardt Mountains. It’s a site rated as Grosses Gewächs (or Grand Cru) and was first planted over 700 years ago, making it one of the oldest vineyards in the Pfalz. When a vineyard survives this long, it usually tells you something. While Müller-Catoir does make a GG from a small parcel in this sloping vineyard (Im Breumel), the lion’s share—taken from the Gehren and Aspen micro-terroirs—makes its way into this Erste Lage (or first growth) offering.

The topsoil of Bürgergarten is sandy and deep, with yellow sandstone bedrock below. It’s a soil that brings power, perfume and intense mineral freshness. The wine fermented naturally and was raised in a mixture of steel tanks and five-year-old 600-litre halbstück ovals (25%) for 10 months. Franzen finds this combination—allied with extended lees aging—results in more expressive, less reductive wines that are more approachable on release.

It’s a stimulating old-vine Bürgergarten from a cool vintage, redolent of orange citrus, summer blossoms and citrus skin. A lick of leesy savouriness adds complexity while invigorating tension carries the silky, crystalline palate to a beautiful, grapefruit-drenched finish. Despite a cooler year, this radiates with the generosity of the terroir cut through with striking clarity; a GG, and a great one, in all but name.

The vineyard of Kiedrich Gräfenberg—or ‘hill of the counts’—has been used to designate Robert Weil’s finest wines since the site was officially classified as ‘Weinlage 1 Klasse’ in 1867. Home to Weil’s oldest vines (up to 80 years of age), with the majority on their own rootstock, it makes perfect sense that Wilhelm Weil decided that it was only from this site that his Grosses Gewächs would derive (even though he could release two GGs from his vineyards).

Weil aims to replicate the style, quality and elegance of the full-bodied dry wines produced in the Rheingau a century ago when the region’s finest Rieslings were the most expensive wines in the world. Despite the high quality of the Turmberg and Klosterberg, this is clearly on another level. The greater loess and loam also impart a distinguishing textural dimension. It’s finer, even more complete and subtly powerful—a wine of obvious Grand Cru class. This year, the GG was raised for 10 months (instead of 12) on lees in large, neutral oak Doppelstückfass (large Stockinger casks). When you think of what we are paying for top-notch Grand Cru white Burgundy, Weil’s remains an absolute bargain, matching the best for class and quality. Few (if any!) could match it for longevity.

At this level, the Prüm wines are still light in body, but the flavour intensity and depth of character go up markedly, and the 2023s deliver a mesmerising balance between elegance, freshness, racy fruit and savoury, slate-like minerality. There is considerably more depth of fruit here than in the Kabinett-level wines, although not necessarily perceptible sweetness. Instead, it is a question of more flesh, more power and, therefore, wines that can stand up to richer food. Katharina Prüm believes this category is the most versatile at the table. We agree. Again, as the notes below attest, 2023 is a stunning vintage for Prüm’s Spätlese. These wines are already thrilling to taste but will continue gaining depth and complexity for decades.