• Dry style
• Grapefruit & lemon
• Sweet florals
• Long finish

A pale green hue with notes of yuzu, grapefruit and lemon peel along with some sweet floral notes on the nose. The palate is focused and driven with low acidity providing tension and length in the mouth. Citrus and crushed stone flavours flow through the palate for long, balanced finish. This is a Riesling with a long future. Mt Difficulty Bannockburn Dry Riesling will improve for 10-15 years given optimal cellaring conditions.

The grapes for the wines that carry the Mt Difficulty Bannockburn label are subject to two strict criteria: they are managed under the umbrella of the Mt Difficulty viticultural team and must be sourced from vineyards situated in a very specific area - the south side of the Kawarau River at Bannockburn. The fruit for this Dry Riesling comes from a blend of our Long Gully and Templars Hill vineyard which consists of Lochar top soil over fine to moderately coarse gravels.

A wet, cold and windy spring introduced our growing season. These conditions continued through our key flowering and fruit set periods in October and December - impacting our potential yields for the season. Disturbed weather patterns continued right through January, and whilst the weather settled in February it was not its usual scorching self. We experienced cool periods through both verasion and ripening; delaying and then slowing down our harvest. Even with all that fruit condition was superb with no disease pressure, and the small berries were bursting with flavour.

Our Dry Riesling attempts to balance flavour and palate weight with the wine’s natural acidity. This season provided a well-balanced Riesling that allowed us to pick at good levels of ripeness in late April. It was carefully hand-harvested and processed through the winery – the wine was whole bunch pressed and fermented on full solids to help enhance palate weight. The wine was fermented relatively warm in stainless steel, using indigenous yeast to retain maximum varietal expression. The wine was fermented slowly to dryness, and then rested unstirred on its gross yeast lees; trying to build texture but not flavour. The wine stayed on gross lees for ten months and was then filtered and stabilised for bottling in March 2021.