Our Dairy Hill Semillon is one of the Top 100 Wines in Australia!

#1 Australian Wine of the Year - the Yangarra Grenache McLaren Vale Ovitelli 2021.

At its most rudimentary level, wine sustains us. At the Top 100 level, however, excellence is determined by those wines that announce themselves with a thunderclap of amazement before a lightning strike of such beauty that it is almost ineffable. In essence, these are wines that wow us because they ask us how a seemingly simple sum of place, grape and craft can render such profundity.

Assembling the Top 100 wines is a forensic process. It requires debate, provocation, arguments and fisticuffs, largely with oneself! As much as looking at scores across the last year of tasting – which serve more as a guideline than last word – along with retasting and reshuffling, the process is one of ascertaining which wines are stamped resolutely with that inimitable zip code, or sense of place, that is so crucial when sorting the wheat from the chaff.

No wine culture is more protean than Australia. It is a vast landmass of spellbinding diversity – climatic and geological. Yet it has a relatively small population and has been traditionally reliant on exports as a result. Australia’s isolation also breeds fearless creativity. Certain styles shift in syncopation with international trends, while others stride out fearlessly on their own. The tensile guise of contemporary Australian chardonnay is an example. 15 years ago, too many wines were picked early on acidity and held on lees for too long. They were excessively reductive and anorexic of feel. Today, the envelope has been pulled back to promote restraint, tension, flavor and fealty to place, rather than its obfuscation by excessive meddling.

The list is not intended to be tendentious, but a reflection of the Aussie zeitgeist. Perfect scores are not my thing, but hopefully you read the reviews and get a sense of just why these wines proved so thrilling.

  - Ned Goodwin MW, Senior Editor - James Suckling

Briar Ridge Vineyard
2023 Single Vineyard 'Dairy Hill' Hunter Valley Semillon

Handpicked from dry grown vines. Foot-stomped, with a brief period on skins before an ambient fermentation in a meld of tank and larger format neutral wood. A different handle to the regional standard. Dry grown. Lemon drop and picked Indian lime, with pithy hints of stone fruit, drifting well away from the tighter citric norm. For the better. A broader texture, loaning itself to approachability without any forfeit of intensity. Nicely chewy, too. This is a delicious mid-weighted semillon, setting the regional bar high by virtue of its stridency across the palate and attractive variances. Drink or hold but best in eight years. Screw cap.

96 points - Ned Goodwin MW

Read more about this year's Top 100 Wines of Australia and the rest of the world at www.jamessuckling.com