2025 Frankland Estate Alter Weg Riesling, Frankland River

This is Frankland Estate's barrel-fermented and lees-aged riesling. Big-format oak, too. Sensational. Complex, layered, intense and fresh, piercing with acidity, balanced in savouriness, impressive fragrance, persistence and general get-up-and-go. Juicy red apple, green mango, ginger biscuit, tart lime and some brine notes conspire between the bouquet and palate. The texture, though, that's the ticket: juicy, a touch chalky, powdery and puckering through the finish. Not many rieslings from Australia go here, and this one takes it to them. Epic. Drink to 2035.

97 points Special Value Mike Bennie for Halliday Wine Companion, October 2026 

Made from the certified organic estate grown fruit, this wine combines parcels from some of the younger close planted Geisenheim clone vines planted in 2006 on a high ironstone rocky ridge with some of the original blocks of Riesling planted in 1988.

With high natural acidity a given for this site, picking decisions are made on ripeness and fruitfulness, with the main aim of working with natural balance yet seeking greater ripeness without tipping into late-harvest territory.

No additions of any kind are used in the making of the wine. The fruit is harvested as cool as possible and pressed immediately, with slow press cycles allowing for soft and long extraction of juice. The cloudy juice is run to a combination of 1,600L and 500L old oak barrels for fermentation with indigenous yeast and the wine is then left on its lees for eleven months, the time allowing for build-up of textural elements and complexity.

About this producer

Frankland Estate was founded in 1988 by Barrie Smith and Judi Cullam deep in the Frankland River subregion of Western Australia's Great Southern, about as remote as Australian wine gets.

The second generation now runs the estate: brother and sister Hunter and Elizabeth Smith, with Elizabeth's husband Brian Kent as winemaker since 2010. They were raised on the land and live on it, which shapes everything about how the vineyard is managed and how the wines are made; organic conversion began in 2005, with full certification achieved for the 2009 harvest.

Their Isolation Ridge vineyard is built on ironstone gravel over clay — the family call it coffee rock — fragile, infertile soils that reward with wines that carry a distinctly savoury, ferrous signature alongside generous fruit and natural acidity. The Southern Ocean's influence and cool nights ensure the fruit hangs long into autumn without losing freshness or energy.