The wine is selected from only the best batches of “free-run” juice; these wines demonstrate great potential for slow ageing and the development of toasty complexity and greater mouth-feel. Howard Park’s Riesling is consistently rated as one of Australia’s best Rieslings with the three most recent vintages being nominated in James Halliday’s Top 100 Wines of 2006, 2005 and 2004. The Howard Park Riesling will greatly reward the patient enthusiast with secondary characters beginning to develop after two years and continuing to add complexity for at least ten years. In a recent vertical tasting (1986 – 2005) held in 2006 at Margaret River to mark the 20th Anniversary of Howard Park, James Halliday noted “The riesling is a 100% varietal from six tightly clustered vineyards on the highest slopes of Mount Barker and the Porongurups… the ’86 and ’91 came equal first, the ’02 third.” A wonderful reinforcement to the ageability of Howard Park Riesling.

Composition: 100% Riesling

Region: 100% Great Southern

Technical Notes:   The 2010 vintage growing season got off to a fantastic start with warmer than average spring conditions. This allowed good fruit set and powered the vines up for even ripening during the average summer conditions. Intense tight flavours and juicey acidity developed allowing us to pick before the autumn warmed up too much. The fruit upon arrival at the winery was immediately processed to ensure the highest quality juice. Only free run juice, which is tighter and more finely structured as it has no phenolic character, was used for this wine. Most juice batches showed wonderfully restrained Riesling aromatics, fine elegant fruit and great length. We kept 5 individual batches separate which were cool fermented in stainless steel tanks to maintain the delicate fruit flavours.  Extensive, some say excessive, blending trials were carried out to produce a wine that is very elegant but still very powerful.

Tasting Notes: Very pale straw with green tinges in colour. Lifted aromatics of musky talcum powder, ripe pear and citrus blossoms greet the taster’s nose. The palate is both zesty and lengthy with lingering citrus fruit and minimally musk corralled by tight acidity. These attributes bode well for a lengthy and lip smacking life of this wine.

Cellaring Notes: A great cellaring prospect. Whilst drinking fantastically well now, the 2010 Howard Park Riesling will peak in 5-7 years and drink well into its maturity for another 15-20 years under screwcap.

Blue-Gold Medal - Rutherglen Wine Show 2010    

Best 2010 Vintage Dry White Table Wine - 2010 Perth Royal Wine Show    

Best West Australia White Table Wine - 2010 Perth Royal Wine Show  

Gold Medal - Qantas Mount Barker Wine Show 2010