Langhorne Creek is one of those go-to places for Top Value wine region. Langhorne creek website

Wine is a fashion business, as we all know. Bordeaux is out of fashion presently (and undeservedly in my view). Cabernet sauvignon and shiraz have both had their ups and downs in Australia, but cabernet sauvignon is still the world’s most popular premium wine varietal.

Likewise winegrowing regions are vulnerable to fashion, but it takes a longer time for a region to change its fortunes.

Regional fashion is closely linked to the popularity of the grape varieties or styles of wine produced by that region.

Rutherglen is famous for its currently not very fashionable fortified wines, so it has been vigorously placing more effort on table wines. Reds especially as they are more suited to the region than whites. Whites are needed, though, so these wineries tend to source their white grapes from other, cooler areas such as King Valley (just as the Barossa sources whites from Eden Valley and Adelaide Hills).

Fashionable regions can charge more for their wines. Margaret River, Tasmania, Yarra Valley, Mornington Peninsula and Adelaide Hills are all examples.

Margaret River is well placed to weather the storms of fashion as it excels in a wide range of grape varieties. Adelaide Hills similarly.

Coonawarra and Hunter Valley are examples of regions which don’t have such a wide menu of grape varieties at which they excel. It could be argued that they are not highly fashionable right now.

The best value for money tends to come from regions that are less fashionable. (There are of course other factors, such as cost of production, lower in the Murray-Darling and Riverina, for example.)

Langhorne Creek is one of those go-to places that I think of first. There is no good reason for Langhorne Creek to be out of vogue, but counting against it are the fact that it has few wineries, and its large area of vineyards has long been a source for the big wine companies which never had a foot on the ground there, and seldom acknowledged the fruit source on their labels. It’s also far more prized for red wines and fortifieds than whites. Hence it had a low profile. Rutherglen is a similar case.

In Langhorne Creek think Bremerton (its Tamblyn cabernet blend, Selkirk Shiraz and Coulthard Cabernet Sauvignon are reliable value red-wine brands), Bleasdale (Wild Fig Shiraz Grenache Mourvèdre and Bremerview Shiraz are solid bets), and Lake Breeze (Cabernet Sauvignon, Bernoota Shiraz Cabernet and Bull Ant brands are top value), and Metala (various red varietals but especially the white label shiraz cabernet).

In Rutherglen the De Bortoli-owned Rutherglen Estates is producing excellent wines at various levels which deliver the sort of value for which De Bortoli is justly famous.

In the Riverina, De Bortoli’s Deen De Bortoli label (especially the durif) is a top value, and at the entry-level, the Sacred Hill wines are very quaffable. And there’s Nugan Estate, Calabria, Yarran, Quarisa and others delivering good quality and sharp value.

Perth’s Swan Valley is another region that is less fashionable these days because it’s a hot area that excels in fortified wines, but there is excellent wine there, and value too. Think Mandoon, Nikola Estate (the former Houghton), Sandalford, Windy Creek, John Kosovich, Faber Vineyard, Talijancich and Sittella.

Perhaps the most undersung region in the country is WA’s Geographe region. It has only 20-odd wineries but covers a quite large area that hugs the crescent of Geographe Bay and sits directly beside and to the north of Margaret River.

It’s a hard ask to compete with Margaret River, Pemberton and the Great Southern, but Geographe will surely become better known as its wines penetrate the market and the minds of drinkers. Names to remember are Whicher Ridge, Harvey River Estate, Talisman, Willow Bridge, Mazza, Aylesbury Estate, Iron Cloud/Pepperilly and Capel Vale.

Clos Henri produces a fully organic, dry-grown sauvignon blanc. Clos Henri Wines

Organic wines don’t immediately come to mind when thinking about budget-conscious purchases and Top Value bottlings because they can often have higher costs of production and come from smaller producers without the economies of scale which large producers can achieve.

In general, the average market price of organic wine is between 10% and 20% higher than conventionally-farmed wines, depending on the country. This does not take into account wines at the very top end in regions like Burgundy, where most of the icon producers will be practising organic farming at prices an order of magnitude higher than their less-renowned peers.

This presents an interesting challenge which was worth investigating. Analysing the reviews from the past year, I was pleasantly surprised to find that there is no shortage of good value organic New Zealand wine in the market. Below are some of the picks from the bunch as well as some general regions and styles where you can find more.

Some countries, such as Spain, can produce organic wine at very good prices due to their costs of production and a good spread of low-disease pressure climates, as shown by the Unexpected Organic Garnacha 2022 from Aylès, and Bodegas Piqueras Valcanto Syrah 2021 from Almansa. Likewise, Italy can offer good value at the entry-level of organics, especially when it comes from a large producer, such as the Tavernello Organico Sangiovese 2023 from Rubicone.

In New Zealand, unsurprisingly, sauvignon blanc leads the pack with a slew of organic wines coming out of sunny Marlborough. A perennial favourite is Clos Henri Sauvignon Blanc: the 2024 is superbly crafted with beautiful fruit expression and the floral nuances of the 2024 vintage. The vineyard is fully organic certified and even dry-grown, which makes it one of the best buys in Top Value. Villa Maria has an organic range too, called Earth Garden, whose Sauvignon Blanc 2024 from Marlborough also delivers good varietal typicity. For something fresher and more saline, Darling Vineyard, who have been organic from the outset, have a ‘second label’ which is affordable called Little Darling Organic Sauvignon Blanc 2024.

The Neudorf Tiritiri Rosé. Neudorf Vineyard

Nearby Nelson producer Greenhough has an outstanding organic wine, the River Garden Sauvignon Blanc 2024 which is packed full of complexity and savoury interest on top of the bright fruit. Not to be outdone, Hawke’s Bay offers Paritua’s Stone Paddock Organic Sauvignon Blanc 2024 for a riper, fuller style.

If rosé is your preference, then look no further than Neudorf Tiritiri Rosé 2024 from Moutere, Nelson. A stunning value for the quality, it also comes packaged in very light weight glass to further reduce its carbon footprint.

Marlborough can even offer a rare example of ‘orange wine’ in the form of the Selection Massale Orange Grüner Veltliner 2023. The vineyard is kept as a secret but it is fully organic certified so vineyard sleuths should have a fun time working it out.

Lastly, one of New Zealand’s oldest wineries, Mission Estate, has a new range called The Gaia Project which contains an organic Syrah 2023 entirely from the Gimblett Gravels. This was a very difficult vintage but the wine came through with easy drinkability and is worth your attention for the price.

(Left to right) Sam, Peter & Tom Barry of Jim Barry Wines. Jim Barry Wines (Matt Turner)

There are so many Aussie wines that over-deliver in the AUD $25-and-under price-range, it’s hard to stop at 10. So this list is far from definitive, and I could have filled it up with 10 Clare Valley rieslings, but instead I’ve tried for some sort of balance.

We can see at a glance that there’s great value inexpensive red in McLaren Vale, just as there is in Clare riesling.

What’s perhaps less predictable is that there are some great values in Margaret River and Yarra Valley, if you know where to look.

Jim Barry Watervale Riesling 2024, Clare Valley

The Barry family make many riesling wines, but year after year they manage to field this superb wine that always tastes like a more expensive bottle. Deliciously limy and appetisingly crisp on the finish. (AUD $23)

Blackstone Paddock Limited Release Chardonnay 2023, Margaret River

A highly regarded but secret Margaret River winery produces both the chardonnay and cabernet under this Aldi label which regularly taste like much dearer bottles. (AUD $20). (Also the Blackstone Paddock Cabernet Sauvignon 2022, Margaret River – AUD $20)

De Bortoli Deen De Bortoli Vat 5 Botrytis Semillon 2021, Riverina (375ml)

This plays little brother to De Bortoli’s famous Noble One and in some wine shows we notice it has actually out-scored Noble One. In other words, it’s of a similar level of quality. Probably it’s the wine that doesn’t make it into Noble One, which suggests De Bortoli have access to a lot of botrytis semillon. Beautiful, luscious ‘sticky’. (AUD $17)

Lake Breeze Bernoota Shiraz Cabernet 2022, Langhorne Creek

For as long as we care to remember, this shiraz cabernet blend has been an outstanding value red. The Follett family winery produces value across the board, but this one also ticks the sub-$25 box. (AUD $22)

Shingleback Red Knot Grenache Shiraz Mourvèdre 2023, McLaren Vale

There is now a ‘reserve’ level of Red Knot, named Classified (at AUD $25), but this baby still delivers surprising flavour for a paltry outlay. Shingleback is now owned by Endeavour Group, so shop for it at Dan Murphy’s or BWS. (AUD $13)

St Hallett Faith Shiraz 2023, Barossa

Named after the Faith Lutheran College in Tanunda, where they even teach wine studies, this evergreen shiraz is typically Barossan and drinks so well young, it’s almost beside the point to mention it also takes some age well. (AUD $24)

Tahbilk Marsanne 2024, Nagambie Lakes

Tahbilk has made the marsanne grape its own, and you can find it just about everywhere, it’s so well distributed. Lovely and fresh when young, it also rewards a bit of aging with delicious honey and toast flavours. (AUD $22)

Vickery Watervale Riesling 2024, Clare Valley

The Watervale has Two Merits in The Real Review Wine Classification of Australia and has for many years been one of the best values in Australian white wine. It’s a classic style that’s ready to drink on release and also ages remarkably well. (AUD $24) (And Vickery Eden Valley Riesling 2024 – AUD $24)

Wickhams Road Yarra Valley Chardonnay 2024

The D’Anna family of Hoddles Creek Estate run a lean, mean operation and grow a lot of their own fruit, which enables them to deliver some great value Yarra and southern Victorian wines. These really are the high bar for value in the Yarra. Bright, fresh and fruit-driven. (AUD $20) (Also the various Wickhams Road pinot noirs, also AUD $20)

Wirra Wirra Church Block Cabernet Shiraz Merlot 2022, McLaren Vale

For decades this has been a go-to everyday McLaren Vale red. Plush fruit, medium bodied, immediate drinkability. (AUD $25)

The Wairarapa is traditionally pinot noir country but don’t overlook the region’s fantastic pinot gris wines. Wine NZ (Craggy Range)

Cultures with wine traditions almost exclusively enjoy wine with food in the context of meals. They developed their tastes and sense of aesthetics for wine alongside the flavours of food and as a result, tend to appreciate elements like tannins, acidity and savouriness for their ability to interact with elements of a dish.

Although intensely fruity and punchy wines are more likely to impress immediately in the glass during a tasting, their subtler and often more structured counterparts can perform better with food.

In New Zealand—as with many other wine regions outside Europe—wines at lower price points can favour immediate, soft fruit over savoury or structural elements. It is assumed that making these more affordable wines less challenging and more straightforward gives them wider appeal and broader enjoyment opportunities beyond the dinner table. It can even be counter-intuitive for a winemaker to think about subtlety, savouriness and texture for their entry-level wines. As a result, these wines may not be that well-suited to food.

In this Top Value feature week guide, we will introduce you to some food-friendly bottles which have versatility at meal-times and offer another way to think about your wine purchases. First up, when thinking about top value, riesling and sauvignon blanc can often deliver the best value in the NZD $25 and under category. The toasty, off-dry complexity of Clearview Coastal Riesling 2023 is a good place to start.

We are almost spoilt for choice in sauvignon blanc but for maximum versatility with food, search for wines which express more than direct varietal fruit character. Either hints of lees-ageing or even some subtle oak ageing can greatly increase this variety’s adaptability for food. Below are four interesting wines from Marlborough spanning the range of styles which will be adaptable with different foods: Awatere River Sauvignon Blanc 2024, Delta Wine Company Barrel-Fermented Sauvignon Blanc 2023, Rapaura Springs ROHE Rapaura Sauvignon Blanc 2024, and Framingham Sauvignon Blanc 2024.

From Nelson, Old House Vineyards Fantail Sauvignon Blanc 2023 is a wine with a touch of age and quite lovely textural complexity. From a nearby vineyard is Blackenbrook Sauvignon Blanc 2024, which captures the brightness of the Nelson sunshine perfectly in its expressive yet mellow style.

The Wairarapa is traditionally pinot noir country but don’t overlook the region’s fantastic pinot gris wines. Martinborough Vineyard Te Tera Pinot Gris 2024 and Hamden Estate Dry River Terraces Pinot Gris 2024 are both wines which over-deliver for the price and have the textural depth and layers to work across a wide range of food.

Two Rivers Isle of Beauty Rosé 2024 is a very versatile wine which punches well above its weight. Winemaker David Clouston has refined the blend over the years and it always hits exactly right. The complexity of this dry rosé harnesses several grape varieties to deliver savouriness and salinity while also possessing good fruit.

Pinot noir is always a difficult one to fit into budgets as it is a low-yielding variety but there are some values to be had in Marlborough and increasingly also in Central Otago.

Akarua Pinot Rouge 2024 from Bannockburn is a ‘nouveau’-style wine which can be versatile with lighter fare which is not traditionally enjoyed with red wines. Wairau River Reserve Pinot Noir 2023 is a bigger, oakier style for those wanting stronger flavoured dishes and on the other end of the spectrum is the Spy Valley Satellite Pinot Noir 2022 for something more crunchy and fruit-driven.

Lastly, syrah should not be overlooked: stalwarts from Hawke’s Bay like Pask Gimblett Gravels Syrah 2023 and Church Road Syrah 2021 have the drink-now immediate complexity to change from dish to dish. In particular, when considering wines for food, look for those which have notes of salinity, good acidity and ripe tannins to give you the most adaptability.

Our ceiling for our annual Top Value wines feature week is $25. Wikimedia Commons

I’ve never met anyone who says “Show me a really poor value for money wine!” Most people want to feel they’ve gotten good value for their hard-earned dollars. Those who declare “I don’t care how much it costs, I just want the best” are not very numerous.

Our ceiling for our annual Top Value wines feature week is AUD $25. There are many rosés to choose from in that category, simply because most rosé is priced well below $25, and there are few expensive ones.

Conversely, there are slim pickings in high-grade sparkling wine under AUD $25. This is because sparkling wine of high quality is expensive to produce—one of the most expensive wine categories. The cheaper bubblies are mainly moscato and prosecco, both categories being, in the main, very young and simple wines.

Riesling is the happiest hunting-ground for true wine lovers, because the average quality is high and price is modest, especially considering the level of quality. AUD $25 still buys you some superb riesling in Australia. The first place to look is the Clare Valley where you find Pikes, Jim Barry, Paulett, O’Leary Walker, Leasingham, Taylors, and many more delicious rieslings in their sub-$25 bottles.

Shiraz is also well served by under AUD $25 bottles, simply by virtue of it being Australia’s biggest wine category. However, my feeling is that GSM blends are even better value. Although there are many of these, they are fewer than straight shirazes, but the average value for money is unbeatable in the red wine category. This is not easy to explain. As a generalisation, most wineries would save their best shiraz and grenache wines to bottle as single varietal wines, and funnel their second-rank (or lower) wine into these so-called Rhône blends.

That doesn’t entirely explain why they are such good value. There may be some other reasons. Mourvèdre/mataro is seldom bottled as a stand-alone but usually used in GSM blends, and there is some excellent mataro around.

As well, grenache blends well with shiraz, arguably taking both components to a higher level. The grenache softens and lightens the blend, acting as a foil for shiraz which, in the warm regions that excel at these wines, can be quite big and tannic. GSMs are often lovely to drink straight off the bottling-line.

There was a time when the price of grapes may have been a factor, too. Mataro and grenache were both cheaper than shiraz—although the new fashionability of grenache has put paid to that idea. Grenache is now most likely to be the dearest of the three grapes in a GSM. An MSG of course need not be a Chinese restaurant wine, it’s just a GSM with the ingredients re-prioritised.

As a footnote to this blend discussion, there are now many blends such as TSG (or GST), the T being tempranillo (or touriga), plus creative blends involving other varieties. And no, a GST is not taxed higher.

Sauvignon blanc tends, rather like riesling, to be inexpensive. It is second only to chardonnay in hectares planted and tonnes crushed by Australian wineries. Most sauvignon blanc tends to be uncomplicated, fruit-driven and unwooded wine, which relies on the aromatics of the grape for its appeal. There are some more complex versions which are usually at higher prices, reflecting lower grape yields and more labour-intensive winemaking. But sauvignon blanc under AUD $25 can also provide many bargains. As always, the score and description are your guide.

Finally, chardonnay. It’s the second most prolific grape in Australia, so it stands to reason there should be many cheaper bottles. And there are. Cheaper chardonnay tends to be lightly wooded or not wooded at all. It tends to be simple, ‘fruit wine’ without the complexing factors that more expensive chardonnays feature. And there certainly are plenty of good-value wines under AUD $25.

The best way to find them is to do a search on our ‘Browse’ page. It will give you the chardonnays in the order of the most recently tasted by The Real Review team members.

Franco D’Anna of Hoddles Creek Estate. Hoddles Creek Estate

Pinot Noir has had a presence in Australia since the early 1800s, first via John Macarthur, then again in the 1830s courtesy of James Busby, but it wasn’t until the later part of the 20^th century that pinot noir began to penetrate into the cooler climate regions of Australia.

With the rise (and re-rise) of regions such as the Yarra Valley, Mornington Peninsula, Tasmania and the Adelaide Hills in the 1960s and 70s, pinot noir became an integral part of the viticultural landscape of these regions, which are now synonymous with world class pinot noir.

Pinot noir is a variety that is notoriously fickle and performs best in a cooler, temperate climate, and in Australia this is delivered via altitude or latitude. And because of its temperamental nature and its propensity to best perform in the more premium regions of the country, pinot noir is typically at the more expensive end of the price spectrum. Hence inexpensive, quality pinot noir is hard to come by, but as plantings increase, volumes increase, and there needs to be an outlet for the ‘declassified’ wines.

The larger wineries of the regions generally have a number of quality and price tiers to their pinot noirs, and at the lower levels, this is where the real value can be found. Quality pinot noir should display fragrance, fruit purity and deliver complexity and mouth-feel, and the four wines selected below tick the boxes across these criteria. These are wines that don’t pretend to be grand cru Burgundy, or indeed top-flight Aussie, but are smart examples of what pinot noir can produce to give the consumer a starting point for this wondrous and seductive variety.

Wickhams Road is the sub-label of Hoddles Creek Estate, established by the D’Anna family in 1997. They produce fabulous examples of pinot noir under the Hoddles Creek label, but it is their Wickhams Road label that delivers amazing value and absolute pinot noir typicity. The latest release Wickhams Road Yarra Valley Pinot Noir 2024 has plenty of bright, crunchy red fruit and textured tannin and shape and for around AUD $20, it over delivers big time.

Like Wickhams Road, Ninth Island from Tasmania is also the ‘second label’ of a top tier producer in Pipers Brook Vineyard. Established in 1974, Pipers Brook Vineyard was a pioneer of grape growing and winemaking on ‘The Apple Isle’. The Ninth Island Pinot Noir 2024 delivers a decent hit of cherry and red fruits and captures enough of the variety to keep things interesting.

Over in South Australia, in the Adelaide Hills, the origin of Lambrook Wines is more recent. Established in 2008 by Adam and Brook Lampit, Lambrook’s Seed Pinot Noir 2024 captures a good amount of Adelaide Hills pinot noir characteristics, with lovely fragrance, a plump red fruitedness and a nice lick of tannin.

Back in Tasmania, and again with one of the established labels of the region: Devil’s Corner. This used to sit as a sub-label to Tamar Ridge, but now, under the ownership of Brown Family Wines, these two brands are separate propositions, and there’s some rich pickings across both brands when it comes to pinot noir. The Devil’s Corner Pinot Noir 2023 delivers a significant amount of persuasive pinot noir for around AUD $25. A wine that speaks of its place and brings all the exotic, nuanced characteristics of pinot noir to the table.

Pinot noir has come a long way in Australia over the last half a century, with the focus firmly being on sites, clones and vinification techniques. The flow-on effect and benefits of winemakers’ obsession with pinot noir are such that even in the lower price points, there will be pinot noirs that deliver real pinosity, with purity, precision and poise.

Tumblong Hills general manager and vigneron Simon Robertson in the vineyard. Tumblong Hills Wines

What is Australia’s best fiano region?

A quick check of The Real Review’s Top Value fianos came up with this list:

McLaren Vale, Clare Valley, King Valley, Hilltops, Adelaide Hills, Rutherglen, Riverina, Margaret River, Murray Darling … and Gundagai.

That’s a pretty diverse range of regions but all of them are reasonably warm and sunny, which is what fiano likes. It is a native of Italy’s Campania region, after all.

I’ve enjoyed the last two vintages of the Gundagai wine, Tumblong Hills Table Of Plenty Fiano, 2023 and 2022 (AUD $25), but it was a glass that I drank with a meal that impressed me with its food compatibility.

First Nations chef Mark Olive (aka The Black Olive) recently hosted a Chefs Of The House degustation dinner at the Sydney Opera House, in a secret room behind a concealed door. All very mysterious, and rather exciting.

The intimate gathering took part in a five-course meal, each dish incorporating Australian native ingredients.

The 2023 Tumblong Hills Fiano was partnered with lemon myrtle and pepperberry cured salmon. The fish was served topped with lemon myrtle ‘pearls’, lemon aspen gel and cucumber; the fish had been infused with lemon myrtle and gin. The wine is subtle and its mild aromaticity permitted the food to take centre-stage, while its intensity and depth of flavour enabled it to stand up to substantial food flavours.

On the menu, the wine’s provenance was listed as “Gundagai NSW, Wiradjuri land”.

Tumblong Hills is not an indigenous brand, but we did have an indigenous wine with the next course, which was smoked blue gum barramundi, paired with Munda Chardonnay 2023, from Tumbarumba NSW, Walgulu Country. This was a pretty good match too, although the wine is a delicate and lightly wooded style of chardonnay from a very cool location. The fish was served with chardonnay vinegar mashed potato, lemon myrtle chilli and macadamia broth. The tangy vinegar mash was new to me and especially enjoyable with the fish.

Chef Mark Olive. Midden by Mark Olive

I first met Mark Olive on the Queen Elizabeth where we were both hosting events. His warmly engaging personality was magnetic, his sense of humour infectious. Another given with Mark is that he will serve wallaby if he can. So the main course was braised wallaby shank, with native tomato sauce and sweet potato rosti. The wine accompaniment was Dalwood Tempranillo Touriga 2022, from the Hunter Valley NSW, Wonnarua Country. Asked by some American guests about the difference between kangaroo and wallaby, Mark replied that wallaby is to kangaroo like veal is to beef: it’s lighter, more subtle and less gamy. This dish would have been enjoyed by aficionados of braised lamb shanks (me included).

Mark also served us green ants, crocodile tail fillet (done tandoori style), sea parsley on sweetcorn saltbush fritters, and a Davidson plum margarita on arrival.

A superb meal and well chosen NSW wines. Incidentally, the fiano seemed to be the group’s favourite wine. Fine music was provided by MariMayi, a First Nations duo from central NSW.

Mark’s Sydney restaurant is Midden by Mark Olive, at the Opera House. He is our outstanding First Nations chef, a Bunjalung man with 30 years’ experience cooking with native ingredients and educating about indigenous culture. His media career has included Outback Café, A Chef’s Line, On Country Kitchen, Good Cooks, The Celebrity Apprentice, The Cook Up with Adam Liaw, and Big Mob Brekky.

If you polled the Australian wine community, riesling would be one of their favourite white varieties. Flickr

Riesling, aka ‘riz’, has always offered up great value for money. If you have AUD $25 in your hand and walk into your local bottle shop, you can pretty well be guaranteed that a quality riesling will present itself.

If you polled the Australian wine community, riesling would be one of their favourite white varieties and rightfully so. It delivers value, quality and a true sense of place. Riesling is a variety that generally doesn’t have maturation in oak or have other artifact embedded. It’s a grape variety that gets picked then goes through a long, cool-ish fermentation process, usually in a stainless-steel tank, and once finished fermentation, it is settled, cleaned up and put into the bottle. This relatively straightforward process is why we see rieslings released mid-year, in the year of their vintage.

I love young, racy riesling with all its citrusy tang and rapier-like acidity, these are wines to get the mouth watering and are great on their own or partner beautifully with freshly shucked oysters or sashimi. I also find that young riesling is really versatile and works wonderfully well over a yum cha luncheon of dumplings, duck and roast pork, with that aforementioned acidity cutting through any oiliness and fattiness of the food wonderfully well.

In our recent Top Value tastings, I tasted a number of rieslings that delivered real typicity, sense of place and value. The regions were well represented by the old stalwarts—Eden Valley and Clare Valley—as well as the cheeky new(ish) kid on the block, Great Southern in the remote southern edge of Western Australia.

A couple of other regions that also delivered the goods were Tasmania and the Adelaide Hills. A common trait of these regions is that they either have altitude or latitude delivering some viticultural coolness. Riesling is a variety that performs best in a moderate to cooler climate and enjoys a greater diurnal temperature range, i.e. warm days and cold nights.

Kaesler is a Barossa based winery, but it has a 60-year-old riesling vineyard in Clare from which to source fruit. The Kaesler Stonehorse Riesling 2023 delivers all that is fabulous about Clare Valley riesling. The product of a later than average vintage, it’s pithy, pure and has line and length that brings to mind a Glenn McGrath delivery.

Millon Wines is a relatively newcomer but its Millon The Impressionist Riesling 2023 is all old school Eden Valley. Youthful and vibrant in the glass, with lashings of just-ripe white stone fruit and fleshy citrus goodness.

Great Southern is Australia’s largest wine region, comprising an area 200km from east to west and over 100km from north to south. The region excels in a number of varieties and riesling is right at the top of the tree. The Robert Oatley Signature Series Riesling 2023, sourced from the Frankland River subregion, has lovely fragrance and purity and the length is mightily impressive. Year in, year out this wine delivers quality and real value.

The Wicks family have been growing and making wine in the Adelaide Hills for a couple of decades now and their Wicks Estate Riesling 2024 is right in the zone. Only recently bottled, it’s tooth crackingly fresh and crunchy. There’s a reminder of Bickford’s Lime Juice Cordial and the acidity has real ping.

Tasmania also delivers in the riesling stakes, and the Ninth Island Riesling 2023 brings plenty of complexity and exotica to the table. Fresh and crunchy, with grapefruit, guava and a lick of nutty nougat, this is a very more-ish wine.

The final riesling that really took my fancy was Rieslingfreak No 34 Tale of Two Valleys Riesling 2024, a blend of Eden and Clare Valley fruit. This brings together the great attributes of both regions and results in a riesling that is delicate, floral and full of citrus and bath salts and with fine, piercing acidity. This is a wine that will definitely benefit from 7-10 years tucked away.

My own passion and admiration for riesling has only been reinforced by the recent tastings of the variety and firms up my belief that riz is indeed the biz.

Pinot noir is famously a ‘difficult’ grape to grow, requiring low crops to deliver high quality. Norwegian Encyclopedia

When the conversation turns to Top Value Wines in New Zealand, there is one particular style of wine which deserves a deeper dive.

Most wine lovers will already be familiar with the wealth of good value to be found in that classic value variety, riesling. Sauvignon blanc also often delivers above its price and increasingly, there are good examples of merlot, malbec and blends thereof. But what about the primary red grape of New Zealand, pinot noir?

Pinot noir is famously a ‘difficult’ grape to grow, requiring low crops to deliver high quality and most of the ‘serious’ examples are also treated to expensive new oak or are scarce, and have their prices driven up by exclusivity or rarity. This lies partly in the standard understanding of quality in pinot noir which stems from the Burgundian context of classified vineyards.

The concept of a specific vineyard having higher potential to create great wine than its immediate neighbour suggests an innate kind of qualitative trait which naturally limits how readily available any single wine can be. There’s also the status quo in Burgundy wherein very few vineyards are monopolies of a single producer, further increasing the number of different wines created from individual vineyards; with the the inverse effect of decreasing the number of bottles made by each vigneron from their parcel.

Contrast this with Bordeaux, where it is largely the producer who is classified, not the specific vineyard. Château Lafite-Rothschild, for instance, could purchase vineyards from an unclassified estate in Pauillac and bottle the wine under their name as a First Growth because of the assumption that it is the producer that is responsible for the high quality, over and above the vineyard itself.

This is not to criticise the Bordelais method—there’s certainly merit in the notion that a good producer will produce good wine, even from ‘lesser’ vineyards, as many who religiously collect Burgundy know. After all, a bottle of village wine from Domaine Comte Liger-Belair is far more sought-after than a grand cru from a lesser negociant. In practice, the Bordelais employ the concept of second wines (and increasingly, third wines) which are selections of ‘lesser vineyards’, younger vines and/or simply more easy-drinking barrels in the cellar.

In New Zealand, we actually adopt both the Burgundian model (i.e. specific sites being higher quality) and the Bordeaux model (of second wines/sub-labels). This naturally leads to more specific origins being regarded as higher quality with prices to match and correspondingly, the most general the origin (and usually, the larger the production the wine), the more affordable it will be. In the instances where second labels exist, they are generally wines which have seen less new oak, usually younger vines with more forward fruit and sometimes higher yields.

So, doesn’t this mean that for ‘value’ pinot noir, we’ll always be going for a lesser product? Well, that depends on your definition and view of a ‘lesser product’.

With fine wine, quality usually includes the implicit acceptance of innate cellaring potential as one of its component indicators. Wines which are able to age and develop over the longer term are considered higher in quality. That is certainly the view in both Burgundy’s Grands Crus and Bordeaux’s Grands Vins. But that does not mean the wines which will not age are bad. In fact, in many blind tastings—and this is something which is often tested in the Master of Wine tasting exam—the ‘lesser’ appellation Burgundy, be it Bourgogne or village, will be more accessible and delicious to drink than a corresponding Grand Cru, which is often very closed, reticent and unyielding at the same age. It can be easy to mistake the ‘lesser’ appellation as the better wine because it simply tastes better at that stage of its life.

Applying this to our pinot noirs in New Zealand, we find a wealth of second labels which provide excellent current drinking, e.g. Seresin’s Momo 2023 (93 points) and Snapper Rock’s Cherry Block 2022 (90 points). We also have wines which are estate blends, rather than single-vineyards, providing delicious fruit-forwardness—such as Mountford Estate 2021 (92 points), Jackson Estate’s Homestead 2021 (91 points, a blend of both mature and young-vine blocks), or Tohu’s Awatere 2022 (90 points), which is part of their Manaaki range as distinct from the single-vineyard Whenua range.

It is worth pointing out that there is also now the new wave of pinot noirs which are made to capture immediate enjoyment and juicy fruit which are deliberately not aged or designed to be aged, like the delicious nouveau-inspired Akarua Pinot Rouge 2023 (90 points). These wines may never make old bones with cerebral complexity, but they possess arresting fruit immediacy and will provide delicious drinking today. That, and they won’t break the bank!

Treasury Wine Estates is selling off several brands including Wolf Blass. Wolf Blass Wines

Here we are in The Real Review’s annual Top Value feature weeks and there is good news for the drinker.

Two of our biggest wine producing entities—Treasury Wine Estates (TWE) and Pernod-Ricard—are trying to quit the lower priced wine market. Sales of lower-priced Australian red wine have slumped, leaving a lot of unsold bulk wine in tanks around the country.

This is likely to result in higher quality wine for the budget buyer. With over-supply, the poorest wine is left over, the best goes into bottles, and the drinker is the winner.

Accentuating the positive, we at The Real Review are celebrating the Top Value wines of Australia and New Zealand. Our annual survey of the best wines up to AUD $25 a bottle is all about finding great value drinking without breaking the bank.

We are championing the seeker of value in wine. Yes, most of the greatest wines of either Australia or New Zealand are expensive, and their price limits their market to a small and well-heeled audience.

But that is not where most wine drinkers live. And when cost of living pressures bite, as they are doing now, people are looking to make their dollar go further.

Treasury Wine Estates is selling off several brands—Wolf Blass, Yellowglen, Lindeman’s and Blossom Hill—and there are rumours other brands such as Wynns, Seppelt, Pepperjack and Rawson’s Retreat could be sold or de-merged into a separate business.

TWE boss Tim Ford says they are going where the customers are going—up-market. “We’re moving to where the consumer is going.”

He makes it sound as if all consumers are going up-market. Maybe what he really means is that cheap wines aren’t sufficiently profitable for a publicly listed company which has to please shareholders and industry analysts.

We say: “Make hay while the sun shines!”