O’Leary Walker Watervale Riesling 2025

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If Polish Hill River represents the power of Clare Valley Riesling, Watervale represents the finesse, the purity. Nowhere is this better exhibited than in the 2025 vintage. While it was a challenging vintage, by all accounts, Riesling shone. It shows.  Bright, lime green hues. Classic Watervale scents, arrestingly aromatic and delicate in jasmine, wildflowers, bath salts, fresh lime and citrus skin and apple. An intensity of lime flavour lies at the wine’s core, a Watervale trait, in sync with florals. It’s a vibrant, alive palate with an easy textural flow in lime, green apple, pear skin, touch of rosemary, Thai basil and wet slate minerality. Finely textured with powdery fine acidity. Purity plus. This beauty will still be looking good in 10-15 years.

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
Pilot
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