2025 Vignerons Schmolzer & Brown Obstgarten Riesling Selection

97 pts
A stunning off-dry King Valley Riesling from Schmolzer & Brown, with real depth and a long life ahead.

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Sale price$52.00
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In stock, ready to ship
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Description

As Tessa and Jeremy say, this is not your Eighties Spätlese Riesling. The Obstgarten Selection is Schmolzer & Brown's take on off-dry Riesling done properly, with just enough sweetness to add depth and none of the cloying stickiness the style used to be known for.

Tessa Brown and Jeremy Schmolzer have built a cult following out of Beechworth for wines with real precision. Riesling is close to Tessa and Jeremy's hearts, and this King Valley bottling ('Obstgarten' is German for orchard - a nod there to Jeremy's ancestry too) shows how seriously they take the grape.

At 11% alcohol it's light on its feet but far from simple. Think lime, fresh-cut apple and spiced pear, a lick of sweet herbs, then a juicy, citrus-bright palate where the sweetness is woven right through rather than sitting on top. The acidity keeps it tight and refreshing, and it runs long. Young, yes, but it's got everything it needs to age beautifully over the next decade or more.

A genuinely complex Riesling first, an off-dry one second. And 97 points from Halliday says plenty.

97 points
"This is a stunning, intense, deeply complex riesling first and foremost... So young and yet so complete; it can only age beautifully."
- Jeni Port (Halliday Wine Companion)

97 points - "To simply call this an off-dry riesling does the wine and the makers a disservice. This is a stunning, intense, deeply complex riesling first and foremost. Concentrated aromas of lime, citrus, freshly peeled apples, spiced pear and gentle spice amid sweet-scented herbals. Flavours run deep, citrus bright, intertwined in herbals and spice and carrying a juicy sweetness seamlessly and with grace, extending long through the finish. So young and yet so complete; it can only age beautifully." - Jeni Port (Halliday Wine Companion)

94 points - "VS&B’s euro take on Rieslings rubs me the right way. This spent some hours on skins, then was wild fermented in old wood. 33g/l of residual sugar. Lemon ginger tea, jasmine green tea, sweet green apple and peach sorbet – that’s the nose; what a great opening. Second act: mirabelle plums, dried apples or dried mango slices, wild honey scents and meadow herbs, fennel and the like. This is a smidge over an off-dry style to taste (Spätlese) with succulence, gentle ginger spice texture, mid-palate weight of ripe fruit, beautifully balanced by a wave of high acidity. It’s a Riesling with plenty of melting flavour and detail, calling to its spiritual mothership while comfortably set in the Australian landscape." - Kasia Sobiesiak (The Wine Front)

92 points - "The 2025 Obstgarten Riesling Selection is concentrated and sweet, with lemon barley, cinnamon donut, stewed green apple and brine. This is pretty, with a pithy, talcy finish and good length too. The fruit is sourced from a vineyard near Whitfield in the King Valley; the eponymous town sits at an elevation of around 250 meters above sea level, though the surrounding areas can be as high as 800 meters. 11% alcohol, sealed under Diam." - Erin Larkin (The Wine Advocate)

This is not your Eighties Spaetlese. The Obstgarten Selection is not sweet enough to be a sticky dessert wine; it would love you to have it with something like a cheddar tart, or a pork knuckle with kartoffeln and sauerkraut. We've gotten pretty accustomed in Australia to selling the Riesling drinker on residual sugar wines with spicy food, and don't get us wrong, this wine is a fantastic match with a Laotian larb. However, the gastronomic tourist will note that there are not many South-East Asian restaurants within Germany. Thusly, applying the philosophy of what grows together, grows together, these sorts of wines love salt pork, medium hard cheeses and lactofermenty salty-sour things. They're also ever so refreshing between drier whites and moving on to reds in a dinner party.

Price Bracket $51 to $100
Type White
Body Light Bodied
Variety Riesling
Country Australia
Region King Valley
Australian State VIC
Feature High Score
Reviewed By Halliday Wine Companion
The Wine Front
The Wine Advocate
Critic Score 97
Alcohol 11%
Size 750ml
Vintage 2025
Closure DIAM 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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