Seifried Winemakers Collection Riesling Sweet Agnes 2019 Half Bottle - Nelson, New Zealand

1/2 bottle dessert wine

97/100 Decanter World Wine Awards (2018 vintage)
97/100 San Francisco International Wine Competition 2017 (2018 vintage)
92/100 Tom Cannavan  (2018 vintage)
16/20 Jancis Robinson  (2018 vintage)

PLATINUM ‘Best New Zealand Sweet’ - Decanter World Wine Awards 2017
PLATINUM - Decanter World Wine Awards 2018
DOUBLE GOLD - San Francisco International Wine Competition 2017
DOUBLE GOLD: New York World Wine & Spirits Competition 2017 USA GOLD & ‘Best in Show’ By Varietal & Country: London Wine Competition 2018

Decanter "Named in honour of Agnes Seifried, 'Sweet Agnes’ riesling has been awarded a staggering 14 trophies and 36 gold medals since its first vintage release in 2006."

Jancis Robinson - "Clean as a whistle with lime sherbet notes and lots of sweetness."

Decanter "Named after the mother of the winemaker, this is sweet alright with 172 grams per litre of residual sugar. The acidity present manages to wash most of this away but does leave a bit more sweetness than you would expect. The aroma is quite limey, but the palate opens up with an impressive array of orange peel, honey, tropical fruits, dried pineapple and stone fruits. Some citrus develops on the long finish." (2015 vintage)

Decanter "This Trophy-winner – which has won two Regional Trophies and three International Trophies for different vintages in previous years at the DWWA – is made from hand-picked grapes grown on its Brightwater vineyard, with a significant percentage of the berries being raisined due to natural dehydration. They then undergo a gentle pressing before fermentation, with the finished wine being bottled just two months after harvest." (2015 vintage)

The Winemaker "The nose is brimming with intensity and very seductive. The wine has generous palate entry with luscious concentration and weight, alongside gorgeous fruit intensity. Mandarin and candied peel flavours are complemented by a perfectly balanced backbone of fine natural acidity."

Wine Spectator "... Seifried is a winery located in the lesser-known Nelson appellation on the northern tip of the South Island, just west of Marlborough. The region has the highest sunshine hours in all of New Zealand. Further inland, mountain ranges to the east, south and west provide shelter for the valleys and benchlands, while the northern areas benefit from a more maritime climate. The summers are warm and relatively dry and the nights cool. Seifried pulls from two vineyard sources to make this complex and juicy white. One is just 10 miles from the coast, adding liveliness to the wine, while the other is sheltered from the coast, with stony soils yielding riper fruit."

The Real Review "The Seifried family now farm over 200 hectares across eight sustainably accredited vineyards in the Nelson region. Wines are exported to 21 countries around the globe and all three Seifried “children” are fully involved in the family business. The Seifried family really are, pioneering family winegrowers."

Decanter "Born in Austria, Hermann Seifried studied winemaking in his homeland and in Germany before moving to South Africa to gain hands-on experience with KWV. His next (and so far final) step on his journey was to New Zealand, where he arrived without a word of English in his vocabulary.
Here he met (Sweet) Agnes, [which some of his wines are named] whom he married in 1971. They held a joint ambition to plant their own vineyard in Nelson at the very north of New Zealand’s South Island, where they spotted the immense potential. Despite the naysayers who claimed that Nelson was too far south and too cold an environment in which to fully ripen grapes, they pressed ahead, and 1973 marked the planting of the first vines, with the first vintage released three years later."

London Wine Show "Seifried Estate is a company devoted to sustainable winegrowing and producing the very best Nelson [New Zealand] has to offer."

Seifried Estate was created by New Zealand winemaking pioneers, Austrian-born Hermann Seifried and his New Zealander wife Agnes. They planted their first grapes in the Moutere Valley near Nelson and made their first wine in 1976. Seifried is a founding member of 'Sustainable Winegrowing New Zealand' and was an early adopter of the programme when both the winery and vineyard auditing programmes were first established in the New Zealand wine industry in the mid-1990s. The programme aims to deliver a framework for viticultural and winemaking practices that protect the environment while efficiently and economically producing premium wine grapes and wine.

Nelson is a small, little-known wine region at the northern end of New Zealand's South Island. Surrounded on three sides by mountains, it enjoys a unique microclimate that is perfect for aromatic grape varieties. Wines made from Riesling, Pinot Gris and Gewurztraminer are considered to be some of the best in New Zealand.

Riesling is a light-skinned, aromatic grape of German origin which is – if the majority of top wine critics are to be believed – the world's finest white wine grape variety.

Dessert wines are designed to be enjoyed in small glasses and treasured like a glass of Scotch. Sweet wine comes from extra-sweet grapes! To make a sweet wine, the fermentation is stopped before the yeast converts all grape sugars into alcohol.