It has been a busy few months at Riverby Estate with our range extending from our traditional four varietals to now include three new wines; a pinot Gris, medium style Riesling, which we call Sali’s Block, and a noble Riesling. We have also entered some wine shows for the first time in several years, with satisfying results.
In NZ our wines can now be found in fine wine shops and discerning restaurants throughout the country and in Australia we welcome Monster Wine Company as our new distributors in Victoria.
New Releases
Most of our 2008 wines have now been released. The dry Riesling will be allowed another few months of bottle aging before release and of course the 08 Pinot Noir and Chardonnay are still undergoing barrel aging.
We are very pleased with our new vintage wines. Across the board we believe our current releases are the strongest line-up we have ever had, certainly the biggest. 2008 was a brilliant growing season until late season rains set in. As we keep our yields intentionally low our grapes ripen before more heavily cropped vineyards. Therefore we were able to pick our fruit while it was in perfect condition.
The 2008 Sauvignon Blanc is particularly impressive. It has enticing ripe fruit characters and is more forward than is often the case with our sauvignons. Having said that our previous vintage is usually drinking well in its second summer and this is certainly true of the 2007 sauvignon, which is drinking beautifully at present. It was pleasing to receive a review from Geoff Kelly, NZ’s most analytical wine writer, which rated the wine very highly and suggested it could age for up to 10 years.
Our very first "sticky" has hit the ground running with a silver at the Air NZ awards and a five star rating from Michael Cooper, who also awarded the 07 Chardonnay five stars. Like-wise the brand new Sali’s Block Riesling took out a gold at its very first wine show. We believe our first Pinot Gris will probably show the most dramatic improvement in the bottle as it has gone ahead in "leaps and bounds" since being bottled.
2009 Vintage
We are extremely happy with the way the 2009 season is progressing. While many wineries are trying desperately to keep yields down, this is normal practice for us as we always restrict our yields. So 2009 at present is business as usual.
Direct Sales
We are in the process of setting up this website so NZ customers can order directly from us. This is an exciting development for us as we know there are some parts of NZ where not all of our wines are easily available from the local wine shop. Look out for an update on this in the coming weeks. In the meantime if you live in NZ feel free to send us an email and we can arrange to send wine to you.
Our newsletter is looking more like an annual event at present, but will hopefully be more regular from now on.
Grape Harvest
The 2008 Riverby grape harvest has been completed. We managed to harvest most of our grapes before the untimely rain, which created some havoc around the district. We are fortunate that with our low yields our grapes can often be picked before vineyards with much bigger tonnages per hectare.
It should be remembered that the 2007/2008 growing season was exceptional until the late season rains and we are very pleased with the quality of our 2008 grapes. The pinot noir was all handpicked before the rains came and the fruit at this stage looks to be some of the best we have ever picked. Likewise, our mendoza clone chardonnay came in looking clean and perfectly ripe.
Our sauvignon blanc was picked in six separate batches this year, mostly before the rains came. While we grow all of our grapes on a single vineyard the variation in soils throughout the vineyard means the grapes ripen at different times so we are careful to pick only when we think each batch is physiologically ripe.
Our Riesling was all handpicked as it is essential to use only perfectly clean grapes for our signature dry Riesling. We also handpicked Riesling for a medium style, which we hope to make for the first time this year.
Wines
We are very pleased with our current release wines, which are all drinking well at present. Our sauvignon blanc and riesling traditionally require a few months after bottling before they open up and drink at their best. The 2007s have now had that time in bottle and are becoming more enjoyable by the week. Likewise, the 2006 chardonnay and 2006 pinot noir have now had sufficient time to also be showing well.
We regularly sample our older vintages to monitor progress, its hard work, but someone has to do it, and it is reassuring to see that our wines are all aging well. The pinots, back to our first vintage in 2001, are still alive and kicking. Chardonnays, back to the first in 2004, are drinking well. In fact the 2004 is exceptional at present and showing no sign of fading.
Sauvignons are obviously variable due to the vagaries of cork; however we can report that most vintages are aging rather well.
The stars though are the Rieslings. We sent all of our Rieslings to a very fine new wine publication called Wine Orbit compiled by Sam Kim - the results are available for download. We are very gratified by the consistently high marks he has given each vintage. You will note he tasted the 2001 under both screwcap and cork, with remarkably consistent results. Even the 2000 riesling, our very first, which has experienced some cork variability, showed well. As usual the 2002 was one of the stars, but we hold very high hopes for the 2007, which could turn out to be the best we have made.
Sam Kim has also reviewed all of our other current releases, which are also available for download.
We plan to release the 2007 chardonnay and 2007 Pinot Noir on 1 June, by which time both wines should have settled down nicely after being bottled in early March. We are enthusiastic about each of these wines, which have looked highly promising since they were first harvested and throughout their time in oak.
Labels
While we haven’t been entering any wineshows lately, as we make a more elegant style that can’t always be appreciated in a mass tasting, the Riverby label itself has come to the fore over the last twelve months. The pinot noir label was highly commended at last year’s Pride in Print awards and then the Riesling label was judged champion label award at the 2007 International Aromatic Wine Competition held in conjunction with the Royal NZ Show in Christchurch.
"Judges commented on the layout and design, appropriate visual and great shelf presence. Labels were judged by design industry professionals in appreciation of the significance of consumer’s first contact with the product.”"
This is great recognition for our label designers McGill Design Group in Sydney and our label printers Pan Print in Auckland.
