Werkstatt 2025 Mount Gambier Riesling

"A bright straw-yellow with faint green highlights, the Werkstatt 2025 Mount Gambier Riesling coheres in the glass with air. There is a refracted quality to the aromatics here, the beholder is presented with lime leaf, crushed chalk, meadow flowers, candied peel. All these elements appear and recede as if coming from different olfactory directions. Time focuses these elements to notes of lemon icing (slight confiture) and pastry, smashed nectarine together with hints of yellow-green apples, gunsmoke and broken shells, brine and capers, and a dash of white pepper. This is a fulsome Riesling with a sensation of 'flattening' towards the finish; the wine broadens along a limestone shelf flecked with sea spray and bracing acid-led vibrancy. It is initially tight and angular, something of early Klee here; pungent accenting in the form of powerful lime peel and flesh, rocky minerals. The mid-palate has yellow apple, exotic spices derived from lime characters, and ripe nectarine which bring a textural element as if sliced with a slightly pulping edge from a blunt knife. The finish has faint sucrosity alongside chalk and shells. Every subsequent revisit to this wine brings into conflict and resolve: rock sugar and black salt; faint earthiness. Piquancy, hinting at candied peppercorns and potentially Sichuan pepper, abounds on the close. Very fine." - David