Stargazer pays tribute to Abel Tasman, who as an explorer and navigator, must have spent a fair amount of time gazing towards the heavens. Tasman, a Dutchman under the employ of the United East India Company was the first European to sight Tasmania (on 24 November 1642) and then the South Island of New Zealand, nineteen days later on 13 December.
The Stargazer Riesling is quartz-green in colour. Crammed with vibrant Cox’s Orange apple and lemon pith notes on the nose, as well as lifted jasmine and crystallised ginger aromatics. The palate’s bright acidity and river stone flavours are balanced with gentle fruit sweetness and talc-like texture.
The fruit for this Riesling was sourced from the Hanigan family in the Derwent Valley, twenty minutes north of Hobart. Overlooking the Derwent River, the riesling, an unknown clone, was planted in 1993 on its own roots on loam over limestone soils. It is cane pruned and trained to a vertical shoot positioned trellis, and shoot thinned in the spring.
Handpicked and whole bunched pressed, only the pristine free-run juice was retained for this wine. The relatively cloudy juice was racked off solids and wild fermented over a period of six weeks before being arrested with a small amount of residual sugar. It spent six weeks on gross lees with weekly stirring to build texture prior to bottling in July.