Howard Park Granite Ridge Great Southern Riesling 2021

You do sometimes wonder why Riesling doesn’t enjoy greater popularity than it does. This is not new. Believers like me have been talking, writing, waiting for the much-longed for Riesling Renaissance for years. We’re still waiting. In the meantime, we have delights like the new Granite Ridge Great Southern Riesling to keep us going. It’s new to bottle and quite discreet but, my, it’s already signalling a long and beautiful tasting experience, not to mention life in the cellar. Dusty, musty florals, lavender, citrus blossom, lemon, bath salts introduce the most beautiful fragrance. Taut and coiled on the palate but getting ready to reveal – you can feel it in the intensity of flavour – all of its citrus, appley energy. Texture is developing nicely, the acidity is brisk. A floral, lemony-citrus Riesling of some class, which is what we have come to expect from the Great Southern. Will become even more of a beauty with time in bottle.

Jeni Port

Wine critic at Winepilot

Jeni Port is one of Australia’s top wine communicators. Based in Melbourne, Jeni created the first wine column in the (then) Sun News-Pictorial before moving over to The Age and becoming that paper’s longest-serving wine writer. Over the years she has written for most Australian wine magazines and these days calls WinePilot home. She is also a Tasting Panel member on the Halliday Wine Companion. She was named Wine Communicator of the Year and Legend of the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival in 2014 and in 2018 Legend of the Vine. She is a founding board member of Australian Women In Wine and is the co-deputy chair of Australia’s Wine List of the Year Awards and China’s Wine List of the Year Awards.

Wine writer and critic