2013 Tongue In Groove "The Mound Vineyard" Riesling Waipara Valley

Tongue in Groove's "The Mound" Riesling is a stunning followup to last year's delicious bottle that sold out in the blink of an eye! Lynette certainly has great skill with Riesling and I love Tongue In Groove's just slightly off-dry, exotic style. The vineyard sits in the flats of Waipara Valley where the vines grow deep into terraces of river / glacial gravels. The fruit from here has intense perfume and flavor concentration, creating some of New Zealand's most heralded aromatic wines. The fruit is selected with a small portion (+/- 5%) of botrytis affected clusters. The fruit is held in the press for a few hours of skin contact allowing gentle extraction of flavors and phenolics. The pressed juice then sits on full solids for almost a week, again allowing interaction between the pure juice and all the "tasty bits"! The wine is then fermented with fairly clear juice, at cool temperatures on fine lees for texture and length on the palate. The resulting wine is an explosion of spiced mandarin, honeyed melon, jasmine and honeysuckle. The interplay between the zesty citrus and more honeyed botrytis tones is magical. The wine's aromatics and mid-palate lead you to think it is sweeter than it is, but then the fine, ripe acidity kicks in and freshens everything up beautifully through the long mouthwatering finish. This is one of those "hole in your glass" wines‰Û_it just keeps disappearing. Awesome stuff! (Ryan Woodhouse, K&L New Zealand wine buyer)