Frankland Estate Isolation Ridge 2018 Riesling wins 2020 WA Good Food Guide WA Wine of the Year and neighbours Swinney secure two placements in the top five out of over 250 entries.
The team at Frankland Estate were clearly thrilled.
“We’re both humbled and elated to be the recipients of the 2020 ‘Wine of the Year’ at the West Australian Good Food Guide Awards.”
The WA Good Food Guide reported that the Frankland Estate Isolation Ridge 2018 Riesling is a wine that is not only excellent in every sense including balance, persistence and detail but is downright delicious and offers wild drinkability. It’s a piercing, powerful, laser-like expression of white wine with a buffer of fantastic chalky-mineral character. There’s a cavalcade of citrus, just ripe green apple and light floral things in the mix too. Blisteringly fresh across the palate, thirst-slaking, and yet complex, the wine is glorious at every sip. Cellar with impunity, too.
“It was a striking wine amongst the landscape of awesome that we had in front of us”, says chief judge Mike Bennie.
“Precision, poise and refreshment factor writ large, but a sense of high drinkability amongst that. And while a totally, wickedly compelling wine to drink, there’s all that detail and layers of flavour that elevate it”
“Top wines were hard to pin down in order, such was the best wines’ calibre”, says judge Gary Walsh, “brilliant tasting, a slew of fine wines, pedigree rose to the top, though there’s so much high quality variety in that top 25”.
The WA Good Food Guide Wine Of The Year Awards judging is more intuitive, and rewards wines that are delicious, complex and interesting rather than technically perfect (though some are, of course) and moves past only judging wines that fall into a narrow bandwidth of acceptability and assumed quality. Judges agree on these through conversation, discussion and thorough and repeated re-tasting.
The WA Good Food Guide Wine Of The Year Awards speaks fluently of an improved breed of judging and practice, with results that have enhanced consumer and trade cut-through. It’s an exciting position to proffer in the saturated and traditional landscape of wine-show judging.
- 2019 Frankland Estate Isolation Ridge Riesling
- 2017 Stella Bella Luminosa, Cabernet Sauvignon
- 2017 Leeuwin Estate Art Series Chardonnay
- 2019 Swinney Grenache, Frankland River
- 2018 Swinney Syrah, Frankland River
The full list available at TOP 25 – THE FULL LIST