2025 ChaLou Riesling, Orange

20g/L. Single-site estate vineyard. Lotus flowers, lime skin and pineapple guava. There is a quartz and pumice-stone edge and a quivering tension between fruit nectar and vibrating acidity. The wine evaporates the remaining oily sweetness and what is left is a lacy grip of skin texture, some moreish white almond creaminess and white apple notes. This is utterly delectable; one of the finest expressions of off-dry riesling in the country. Outstanding value; if there is any left, scoop it up. Drink 2025-2035.

96 points (Special Value) Shanteh Wale for Halliday Wine Company, March 2026

ChaLou is the project of Nadja Wallington and Steve Mobbs, two winemakers who met studying at Charles Sturt, spent years working across Australia and overseas, and reunited in Orange in 2014. They purchased their vineyard in 2020 and haven't looked back. Nadja was named Young Winemaker of the Year in 2022 and spent several years making wine at Philip Shaw before launching ChaLou. The 2025 Halliday Dark Horse Winery award was well earned.

The vineyard sits at 900 metres on ancient Ordovician soils, volcanic material laid down around 460 million years ago. This gives the fruit a mineral precision that sets it apart from other Orange Rieslings. The Riesling is wild fermented and stopped early to retain a touch of residual sugar, around 20g/L. This isn't sweetness for its own sake. It's about texture, used deliberately to balance the site's naturally racy acidity and give the wine weight and length.

Vibrant and aromatic, the nose shows mandarin, orange blossom, jasmine and peonies with a stony mineral edge. The palate is lively and precise, the fruit sweetness barely perceptible against the driving acidity, finishing clean and dry with real persistence. One of the more distinctive Rieslings being made in Australia right now, from a producer still very much on the way up.

Thai green curry, spicy chicken larb, pipis in XO sauce or Vietnamese fresh spring rolls. Equally good as an aperitif on a warm afternoon.

Drink now through 2035.