Halliday 2021 Awards: Great Southern Wines are Exceptional Quality and Value for Money

The 2021 Halliday Awards has recognised Great Southern wine producers for making exceptional wine across a number of varietals that offer incredible value for money. There were 111 Great Southern wines from 28 wineries that were awarded gold, 95 points or above, and of those, about half (49 per cent) were considered to offer special value for money.

Forest Hill Vineyard was named in Australia’s Top Ten Best Value Wineries with 70 per cent of their ten wines that scored 95 points or more considered special value for money. Rating highest was their 2019 Block 1 Mount Barker Riesling at 98 points and is due for release this weekend at $55 a bottle.

The Halliday website states:
“The value all Forest Hill’s wines offer is exceptional, the style that of old money – another prime example of consistently extraordinary value. Six wines pointed between 96 and 98 points laid an irrefutable claim to inclusion near the top of the totem pole. Forest Hill has the early days of the Great Southern in its DNA.”

Other big scoring wines include the 2017 Singlefile The Vivienne Denmark Chardonnay at 98 points which was also named in Australia’s Top Ten Chardonnay list, and Duke’s Vineyard 2019 Magpie Hill Reserve Riesling and 2018 Magpie Hill Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon, both scored 98 points with another six of their wines awarded gold.

Sixteen wines from Larry Cherubino Wines have been awarded 95 points or above with their 2019 Cherubino Great Southern Riesling rated highest at 97 points. Singlefile Wines has nine wines that scored 95 points or higher, eight wines from Rosenthal Wines, six wines from Frankland Estate, four wines each from Alkoomi, Castelli Estate, Harewood Estate, and Plantagenet Wines, and three wines each from Castle Rock Estate, Howard Park, Poacher’s Ridge Vineyard, Swinney, Terra Riche, and Xabregas have also been awarded gold at 95 points or more.

Halliday’s Best of the Best 2021 Rieslings listed 13 Australian wines that scored 97 points or higher with six of those produced in the Great Southern. There were a further 31 Great Southern Riesling wines rated 95 points or higher with 68 per cent of Rieslings classed as offering value for money.

Other varietals produced in the Great Southern rated as exceptional in Halliday’s 2021 Awards include 22 Shiraz wines, 20 Cabernet Sauvignon, nine Chardonnay, six Cabernet Blends, four Sauvignon Blanc, and two each of Malbec, Grenache, and Pinot Noir wines.

Wine Australia’s industry snap shot shows that there are 65 wine regions across the country, 2,468 wineries and 6,251 grape growers that crush 1.73million tonnes of grapes per year. The Great Southern crushes about 12,000 tonnes of grapes per year, representing just 0.7% of Australia’s total crush.

There are 32 five-star wineries in the Great Southern listed in the 2021 Halliday Awards, namely wineries that produce outstanding wines.

*  Vineyards in the Great Southern, cellar doors in Margaret River.

The Great Southern wineries, of which there are 53, make up just 2.1% of all Australian wineries.

The Halliday website states that more than 9,000 wines have been reviewed for the 2021 Halliday Awards.

More details of Great Southern Wine Region producers including those with cellar doors and restaurants can be found at www.greatsouthernwine.org.au.