I was at a tasting in March of the wines of Mount Langi Ghiran, long-hailed as one of Australia’s leading producers of spicy, peppery Shiraz. Before we got to the reds, we were poured a taste of the 2023 vintage of Langi’s Cliff Edge Riesling. And as soon as everyone took a sip you could hear an audible gasp of delight ripple through the room. The winemaker wanted to move on, but we all wanted to linger awhile with this scintillating glass of pure, thrilling, lime-laced dry white wine.
The Mount Langi Ghiran vineyard, pictured below, was first planted in the 1969 in the Grampians region of western Victoria by three Italian brothers, Don, Lino and Serge Fratin. The brothers planted cuttings of Shiraz taken from century-old plantings at Best’s in nearby Great Western; after the Fratins sold the vineyard in the 1980s, the new owner/winemaker Trevor Mast (who had worked at Best’s) perfected the pepper-laced, intense-but-elegant cooler style of Shiraz the vineyard produced, establishing Langi as an Australian benchmark of the style. Mast died in 2012 after a long battle with early-onset Alzheimer’s; the vineyard is now part of the Rathbone Wine Group, which also owns Yering Station in the Yarra Valley and Xanadu in Margaret River.
Shiraz is not the only grape at Langi, though. Over the decades smaller blocks of other varieties have been planted at the 70-ha (173-acre) site, reflecting changing tastes and trends: Cabernet, Merlot, Sangiovese, Barbera, Grenache, Pinot Gris, Chardonnay, Viognier – and, crucially, Riesling, planted in 1976.
This last variety was particularly appealing to Mast, who started his winemaking career in the early 1970s studying at Geisenheim and working in Germany before returning to Australia. Although the Shiraz – rightly – became the variety that has defined Langi, Mast and subsequent winemakers have also produced some wonderful, long-lived expressions of Riesling over the years.
Indeed, the cool climate of the Grampians region – and the even cooler western Victorian region of Henty – is particularly well-suited to the great white grape. But because there are far fewer examples made in this part of the world than in, say, the Clare Valley in South Australia, and because the vineyards of western Victoria are much more remote and scattered, Riesling is not as highly valued here as it elsewhere (the notable and entirely worthy exception being Crawford River, who charge AU$58 for their current release and closer to AU$100 for their Reserve and Museum Release bottlings).
This, perhaps, is why the Cliff Edge Riesling from Langi, produced from 47-year-old vines, and made with precision and sensitivity in a style that will cellar well for many years – a wine that can cause a room full of wine professionals to sigh when they taste it – sells for just AU$30.
Not only that, but a quick look at Wine-Searcher.com reveals the last five vintages of the Cliff Edge Riesling also have quite wide distribution around the world – although, sadly, it is not currently available in the UK. However, Hallgarten & Novum do import Mount Langi Ghiran's Shiraz wines, which also are well worth seeking out.
You can read tasting notes for the 2023 Cliff Edge Riesling, plus other vintages of this great-value wine – 2020 to 2024 inclusive – as well as recently tasted vintages of Cliff Edge and Talus Shiraz, and the last ten releases of the winery’s top Shiraz, Langi, that I tasted late last year, here.
Explore thousands more wines from Victoria and further afield in our tasting notes database. All images courtesy of Rathbone Wine Group.
