• Medium-dry style
• Mango & pineapple
• Juicy acidity
• Long finish

A powerful nose of exotic mango and pineapple with orange blossom and mandarin citrus. This Riesling is all about balance. Intense citrus fruit initially flow into a juicy, succulent mid palate. A balanced amount of residual sugar and acidity leads to a very long finish with salivating mineral accent, begging you for another glass! Bannockburn Target Riesling will improve for 1-10 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 by our viticultural team and must be sourced from Bannockburn vineyards - the south side of the Kawarau River in the southern Cromwell basin. Target Riesling is sourced from various vineyards dependent on vintage conditions. Roughly a third of the fruit for this wine came from our Long Gully vineyard which consists of Lochar soils over Gibbston glacier outwash gravels. Lochar soils generally have a 30cm depth of top soil over fine to moderately coarse gravels. Another third came from our Templars Hill vineyard; the soils here vary across the vineyard from a mixture of heavy Scotland Point clay soils to drought-prone coarse gravel Bannockburn soils (classified as man-made due to the sluice mining). The balance of fruit comes off our Swansong vineyard, this terraced vineyard is host to a variety of soils as it wraps around the hillside, these range from older Manuherikia clays through to younger Carrick range sourced gravels.

The 2021 growing season was a return to the enviable, lower stress conditions that Central Otago is famous for. We started with a warm spring, which gave the vines a good start. January was cooler and wetter, which replenished the soils and slowed growth, giving small, intensely flavoured grapes. By the time the beginning of harvest rolled around, we were just ahead of our long term average in terms of rate of ripening, and with fruit in fantastic condition. Yields were thankfully back to average in most areas, with only Bannockburn cropping slightly lower. This has given wines with excellent flavour and structure.

Target Riesling is a style crafted to balance residual sugar in perfect harmony with the wine’s natural acidity. The fruit was hand harvested on the 11th April and 24th April. The fruit was processed in a reductive manner, with the juice settled for a week prior to being racked clean. This gave us time to brew an indigenous starter culture. The wine was fermented cool with indigenous yeast, to help maximise varietal character. The ferment was monitored closely until the perfect balance between acidity and residual sugar was reached. The wine was then sulphured, chilled and left on lees for 4 months.