2023 Vignerons Schmolzer & Brown Thorley Riesling
2023 Vignerons Schmolzer & Brown Thorley Riesling

2023 Vignerons Schmolzer & Brown Thorley Riesling

96 pts
Vignerons Schmolzer & Brown |Beechworth |Riesling
High-tensile cool climate Riesling from the VS&B duo. Texture, length and thrilling acid.
Price:
$66.00
Stock:
In stock, ready to ship
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Description

The Thorley Riesling is grown by Tessa & Jeremy at VS&B high up on their small vineyard in Stanley outside Beechworth. It's frightfully cold up there on the property, perfect conditions for growing fine-boned, delicate Rieslings. 

Jeremy has spent a vintage at the great Keller Wines in the Rheinhessen, and Tessa is obsessed with the variety - it's fair to say they know their way Riesling. With this wine, made from their own home-grown fruit, no stone is left unturned getting this to its full potential.

In contrast to their King Valley Rieslings, this is close to bone dry. A little time in old oak fills out the texture and will allow for excellent ageing potential. It's a gorgeous wine made in very small quantities.

96 points
"Achingly beautiful! After a "limit-testingly cold" '22 vintage, Thorley is back big time in '23 and hitting some gorgeous high notes. Riesling lovers, especially, are in for a real treat... it is undoubtedly a wine of poise and lasting beauty."
- Jeni Port (Halliday Wine Companion)

Mike Bennie

Mike Bennie

The Wine Front 96 Points

A ripper. This is outstanding, top flight, take this to the best of best riesling regions and show it off as a shiny thing and let off some fireworks in the local park. Silky texture, wild honey, lime, ginger, compact frame and good inward concentration, impossible length, sense of saline freshness through the core. Balanced in its elements, delicious overall. Stunning and striking. 96 points

Jeni Port

Jeni Port

Halliday Wine Companion 96 Points

Achingly beautiful! After a "limit-testingly cold" '22 vintage, Thorley is back big time in '23 and hitting some gorgeous high notes. Riesling lovers, especially, are in for a real treat. Impressive intensity from the outset with a perfume both fragrant and delicate: lemongrass, lime zest, makrut lime, citrus, hints of Thai basil, ginger and dried pear. Flavours carry long and true on a mouth-watering acid line. Well composed and showing a lovely full texture and phenolic weight, it is undoubtedly a wine of poise and lasting beauty.

Kasia Sobiesiak

Kasia Sobiesiak

The Wine Front 95 Points

Made into spätlese trocken ripeness and sweetness level (ripe and dry). The best of Riesling’s DNA is teased out in this wine; no bad genes here. Zesty, zingy and flinty with vibrating, intense perfume. The portfolio of all citrus fruit, the sweet lime and the slightly bitter pomelo, moving into lemon curd, lemon biscuit, macadamia note, orange blossom, essential oils, with a cool, melting, smooth texture of slippery chalk, icing sugar, lemon sorbet… very fine, very minerally, very long. World-class.

Tom Kline

Tom Kline

Wine Pilot 93 Points

There are lovely orange citrus aromas to start, with orange sherbet, rock candy, mandarin oil, segments, and blossom. A good swirl unlocks a stony minerality along with a glimmer of pickled ginger and tonic. The cool and late 2023 vintage shows clearly here, particularly as those orange citrus notes are quickly guillotined on the palate by a tart, tangy profile and linear shape, despite a good burst of glycerol texture. Mandarin zest, lemon juice and pith, pickled herbs, salted grapefruit, and tonic water shoot through a coiled funnel of rapier acidity to a citrusy close of good length. This is a more angular release, reflective of the cool, drawn-out vintage, with a febrile and pointed aesthetic. VS&B have done their job in capturing the essence of 2023. It will be interesting to see how this fleshes out with time.

Bright pale straw. A nose with talcy blossom floral notes, a daub of lemon butter and grapefruit pith.

The palate is quite energetically dry and deceptively powerful, with floral intensity driven by an interplay between slatey dry extract and toothsome minerally acidity. The wine walks amongst orchard and stone fruits – yellow apple, unsweet apricots, a building tart kumquat note.

Price Bracket $51 to $100
Type White
Body Light Bodied
Variety Riesling
Variety Style ["Textural Riesling"]
Country Australia
Region Beechworth
Australian State VIC
Feature Women in Wine
High Score
Reviewed By Wine Pilot
The Wine Front
Halliday Wine Companion
Critic Score 96
Size 750ml
Vintage 2023
Closure Cork

Vignerons Schmölzer & Brown

Tessa and Jeremy are playing a long-game with their Vignerons Schmolzer & Brown label.

They have invested in a block of land high in the hills behind Beechworth and have planted 10,000 vines on it over the last couple of years with the plan to farm it organically. Tessa has a wealth of experience from time at Sorrenberg and Kooyong, Jeremy is an architect by trade with an eye for detail.

It comes as no surprise that the buzz around this husband and wife team is palpable and the praise is high. Max Allen called them, “one of a remarkable number of impressive new wine labels to have cropped up in Beechworth over the last five years.”

They are going to be at the forefront of Beechworth wine for many years to come.

Tessa and Jeremy in Thorley vineyard - Beechworth, VIC Vignerons Schmölzer & Brown

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