2025 Stargazer Palisander Riesling, Coal River Valley

The latest Palisander Riesling from Samantah Connew’s Stargazer label, with the previous 2025 vintage rated 95 points by The Real Review.

We’ll add our tasting notes for this wine soon. In the meantime, here’s what Samantha herself sees in a glass of the 2025:

“Very pale yellow in colour with green hints. The nose is a combination of wild fennel seed and bay leaf spice overlaid with some white blossom waxiness. On the palate the acid is integrated with the custard apple generosity, coherent and seamless with no hard edges; rather soft and sherbetty, finishing with fruit intensity and concentration.”

More about this wine

The 2025 release, the eighth vintage for this wine, was again sourced exclusively from Stargazer's Palisander vineyard that Sam Connew purchased in 2016 in the Tea Tree area of the Coal River Valley. It was planted in 2002 with plant material sourced from Moorilla at Berriedale on soils of brown dermosol on Jurassic dolerite. Cane pruned and trained to a vertical shoot positioned canopy, Sam practices green harvesting and shoot thinning in spring and summer as required.

Hand harvested, the fruit was destemmed and left in contact with skins for more than twelve hours prior to gentle pressing. Fermented with indigenous yeasts over a six-week period, with 75% in concrete vats and the balance in ceramic eggs, then left on lees for close to ten months.

About this producer

Stargazer pays tribute to Abel Tasman, the Dutchman who is believed to be the first European to sight Tasmania and the South Island of New Zealand in 1642. Founder and winemaker Sam Connew is a born and bred South Islander who fell in love with Tasmania after fifteen years of vintages across the globe. Her Palisander Vineyard in the upper reaches of Coal River in Lutruwita/Tasmania was planted by its original owners in 2002 to Riesling and Pinot Noir and expanded in 2017 by Sam with more of the same (but increasing clone numbers) and four clones of Chardonnay. Pinots Blanc and Gris followed in 2021, along with Gamay and Gewürztraminer.

The property sits on brown dermosol soil over Jurassic dolerite and is particularly high in calcium associated with thicker skins and slower ripening. Sam believes in the strength of biodiversity and regenerative agriculture and uses sheep and chickens for manure distribution and weed and bug control. Bees and other insects are essential for vine pollination too, and Sam has planted over 1000 local plants on the property since 2020 to provide them with food around the year.