2013 Picnic Riesling

About the wine

PICNIC

Featuring the Proprietor’s Grandfather, Sydney Neill – Wine Merchant, on the label, Picnic Riesling is our perennial favourite and a wonderful introduction to the pleasure of Central Otago Riesling. We think it is just as much a dinner wine as a luncheon – equally enjoyable at home outdoors, as at the Captain’s Table.

Tasting Notes

Vintage Comment:

A good start to the season with healthy well balanced canes being laid on all three vineyard blocks with appropriate bud numbers, but growing then got off to a slow start with cooler than normal temperatures in late spring. The resulting bunches from the cooler spring were of average size but made up of very small berries, which regardless of clone and rootstock ripened at much the same time after a very warm and dry autumn. March was the warmest March we have on record. Additionally there was not the normal large diurnal shift this autumn tending much more to range between 5 degrees over night to 25 degrees during the day. This seemed to be the catalyst for lovely even ripening and carried on until harvest at Red Bank vineyard (HQ) on the 19th April.

Winemaker’s Notes:

Stone fruit and spice aromatics followed by a supple and superbly textured mouth-feel.  This wine displays great density and persistence.

Vineyard Management:

Own roots – cane cuttings from Felton Road. Single cane, one bunch per shoot, 5500 vines per hectare. Shoot and lateral thinned, and leaf plucked. Hand harvested on the 20th of April 2012.

Soil:   Gravelly loamy silt

pH  3.09 -- TA   8.0 g/L -- Alc  12.5% -- R/S:  Off dry, 10g/L

Proprietor: Sam Neill

Viticulturist:  Mike Wing

Winemaker:  Dean Shaw

Bottled: September 2013

Total Production: 600 cased