Riesling royalty born at Great Southern’s Plantagenet Wines

Western Australia’s sprawling cool-climate region has become one of Australia’s best producers of premium riesling from iconic vineyards carefully selected in the 1960s and 70s.

Great Southern pioneers such as Plantagenet have shown that their vineyards are brilliant producers of outstanding grapes.

At the end of the Earth, across the wild lands of Western Australia’s Great Southern, riesling stands tall.

This sprawling cool-climate region, bounded by the Southern Ocean, has become one of Australia’s most consistent producers of premium riesling, regularly pleasing judges’ palates at wine shows and events such as the Halliday Wine Companion 2025 Awards, where five Great Southern rieslings scored 96 points or higher.

While its viticultural jewels may not yet be as well-known as South Australia’s riesling strongholds of Clare and Eden valleys, Great Southern pioneers such as Plantagenet have shown that their vineyards, planted in the 1960s and ’70s after careful scientific analysis, are brilliant producers of outstanding grapes.

The Plantagenet Angevin Great Southern Riesling 2024 heads The Australian Wine Club’s selection of superb riesling in our mixed dozen deal of the week, which includes wines from four Australian regions, covering vintages back to 2017.

Plantagenet is Great Southern’s oldest winery and the custodian of vineyards that were among those first planted in WA.

Plantagenet owner and managing director Tom Wisdom points out that riesling was part of the Great Southern story from the start, with the Department of Agriculture planting riesling and cabernet sauvignon vines at its first experimental vineyard at Forest Hill, near Mount Barker, in 1965.

This encouraged Tony Smith, an English-born jackaroo-made-good who had just begun grazing cattle and sheep on his newly acquired property at Mount Barker, to plant 4½ acres of vines in 1968. Further plantings, including riesling, were carried out three years later at another site, known as the Wyjup Vineyard, and Smith set up Plantagenet’s winery in an apple packing shed in 1975.

Plantagenet Wines owners Tom and Jo Wisdom.

The Wyjup Vineyard remains Plantagenet’s most treasured asset today.

“There was a lot of scientific analysis done in the early days and the sites chosen to plant grapes back then have turned out to be exceptional vineyards,’’ says Wisdom, a viticulturalist whose career has included managing major agribusinesses for the Commonwealth Bank.

Wisdom owes his connection to Plantagenet to one of WA’s early settlers, Lionel Samson, who founded in 1829 what has become the second-oldest family business in Australia, now known as the Lionel Samson Sadleirs Group.

Samson, a student at Oxford University and member of the London Stock Exchange, was a trailblazer, setting up business as a wine and spirit merchant, importer and auctioneer, and obtaining WA’s first liquor licence.

Over the generations, the Lionel Samson business expanded into logistics and industrial packaging but kept its interests in the wine game, investing in Plantagenet through the 1990s until assuming ownership in 2000.

Wisdom, a sixth-generation descendant of Samson, ran Plantagenet for three years before purchasing the business from the Lionel Samson group in 2021 with his wife, Jo, who holds a PhD in viticulture.

Working with chief winemaker Mike Garland, Wisdom’s mission is to ensure Plantagenet’s three estate vineyards continue to produce outstanding quality fruit with the cool-climate characteristics that are “distinctively Mount Barker, Great Southern”.

Mount Barker is one of five subregions in Great Southern, along with Albany, Denmark, Frankland River and Porongurup.

“I’m an eternal optimist and while the wine industry is working its way through challenging times, Western Australia is benefiting from its focus on premium wine,’’ Wisdom says.

Like many WA wineries, Plantagenet is working to rebuild trade with China but is also seeing strong growth in the United Kingdom.

“We are in a good position of focusing on premium wines; less volume at better prices,’’ Wisdom says, while also pointing out that this strategy lines up with the growing trend of wine lovers drinking less but drinking higher-quality wines.

When it comes to riesling, Wisdom says Mount Barker and Porongurup are renowned for producing “powerful, pure and intense wines with good natural acidity and great length and precision”.

Wisdom also calls out a special characteristic in Mount Barker rieslings. “Along with typical citrus aromas and flavours, we often see a pretty floral character – which is a little different from Clare and Eden valleys, which can be more structural and linear,’’ he says.

Like all good rieslings, we can expect Plantagenet’s Angevin to age well. Pull one out in 10 years – if you can wait – and you’ll learn a little more about the greatness of Great Southern.

Plantagenet Angevin Great Southern Riesling 2024

The spoils from Plantagenet’s 1971 Wyjup Vineyard. Classic riesling scents of lime juice, with hints of florally musk perfume, lanolin and sea spray. Citrus flavours (lemon and lime) flow on the palate along a line of persistent natural acidity. Clean and pure. 93 points, Ray Jordan. 13% alc; RRP $34 a bottle.

SPECIALS $28.99 a bottle in any dozen; $28.99 in Riesling Through The Ages dozen.

Taylors St Andrews Clare Valley Riesling 2020

This five-year-old trophy winner fuses the Clare signature of lemon and lime with hints of orange marmalade and orange blossom. Fruit richness on the palate speaks to the quality of the vineyard. Classy. 95 points, Royal Sydney Wine Show. 12.5% alc; RRP $45 a bottle.

SPECIALS $42.99 a bottle in any dozen; $28.99 in Riesling Through The Ages dozen.

Smeaton Estate The Sienna Adelaide Hills Riesling 2019

Fruit grown in a 440m altitude vineyard in the Adelaide Hills delivers grapefruit and lime curd scents with a hint of ginger and kerosene peaking through to excite lovers of aged riesling. 94 points, Halliday Wine Companion. 13.1% alc; RRP $33 a bottle.

SPECIALS $26.99 a bottle in any dozen; $28.99 in Riesling Through The Ages dozen.

Patrick of Coonawarra Block 5 Aged Riesling 2017

Plenty of fruit freshness in this 2017 release but lovely secondary characters typical of aged riesling are on the rise: orange blossom and honeysuckle, honey on toast and dried mango, along with refreshing lemon sherbet. Good acidity. 94 points, Halliday Wine Companion. 11.5% alc; RRP $45.

SPECIALS $39.99 a bottle in any dozen; $28.99 in Riesling Through The Ages dozen.

RIESLING THROUGH THE AGES DOZEN Three bottles of each wine above for $28.99 a dozen. SAVE $123.

Order online or phone [phone] Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm AEST and quote ‘AC4D’. Deals are available only while stocks last. The Australian Wine Club is a commercial partnership with Laithwaites Wine, LIQP770016550.