Forrest | Award Winning and Highly Praised Wines, New Zealand

Tri Nations 2009 – Top wine in dessert class Double Gold
NZ International Wine Show 2009 - Silver
International Sweet Wine Challenge 2009 – Silver
05 JFC Noble – Bronze
International Sweet Wine Challenge 2008 – Bronze
Winestate Marlborough Regional Tasting- ***** 5 stars “Ravishingly scented, with a lovely spread of lemon, apricot and honey flavours, intense, long and rounded. Very pure, rich and oily, with bottle-aged complexity”
Air New Zealand Wine Awards 2007 – Silver Medal
Tri Nations 2007 – 2nd place in Dessert Wine class
Canberra International Riesling Challenge - Bronze
International Sweet Wine Challenge 2007 – Trophy for the “Best Sweet White Table Wine- Fruity Styles” and a gold medal
Winestate Magazine Recent Release Tasting – 5 Stars
Air New Zealand Wine Awards 2006 – Silver medal
Tri National 2006 – Trophy for Top Sweet Wine
Gourmet Traveller Wine Oct/Nov 2006 - Top 12 N.Z. Stickies
New Zealand Wine Society Royal Easter Show 2006 – Silver Medal
Air New Zealand Wine Awards 2005 – Bronze Medal
Canterbury A & P Show International Aromatic Wine Competition 2005 – Gold Medal
Geoff Kelly Wine Reviews –
Dessert: 2005 John Forrest Noble Riesling Forrest Collection ($50 per half) 19 points.
As New Zealand wine has become more and more international in character and capability, richer sweet courses have remained the food class where it has been hard to find a local wine that really measures up. Many of the rieslings have been too light and total acid too high for food comfort. Latterly with the move towards sauternes styles in Hawkes Bay, fruit ripeness has sometimes been less than perfect, with just a little mean green thread inappropriate to the lusciousness and balance desired. Or sometimes the wines are over-developed and the oak is too assertive to complement food. And throughout the class, VAs have often been too high to sit happily with food.

What a pleasure it is to record therefore, that even against a near-impossible traditional olde English Christmas pudding more suited to an old sweet fortified wine such as madeira, this remarkable Forrest Collection Noble Riesling is of sufficient substance, complexity and botrytis purity to be magical. Apart from its perfect ripeness and purity, the wine's key feature is the dry extract and body, additional to the sweetness at 220 grams per litre. Food purists might argue that it is still too light for this assignment, but I thought it worked because of the body, and it refreshed the nose and palate beautifully. Also the subtlety of the oak component (if any) allowed the almonds in the pudding – a key feature – to show through delightfully. This Collection Noble Riesling is again one of the greatest sweet wines ever made in New Zealand. It will cellar for a decade at least, and maybe much longer.

“Very intense sweet wine with honey, vanilla, citrus and mineral flavours. It treads a fine and successful line between botrytis influence and varietal character - both are very evident. ” Bob Campbell, February 2008, 93 Points, 5 Stars

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