Gladstone’s Urlar vineyard and winery has much to celebrate this harvest season after taking home two golds at the New Zealand Easter Show Wine Awards held recently.

The certified organic producers won gold for their Urlar Pinot Noir 2018 and gold for the Urlar Late Harvest Riesling 2019, which also went on to take out the Trophy for Champion Sweet Wine.

Winemaker Jannine Rickards said, “We are super happy with the result.  The wine is energetic and lively with a more elegant residual sugar of 104g/L left from the fermentation”.

“It is very clean and versatile and is certified organic. I love it for its pink grapefruit skin, honey and spice characters, it is a complete sweet wine with nice drive and a lingering lively honeyed finish.”

The awards is the country’s oldest wine competition having started in 1953. Awards director Terry Dunleavy said the 22 judges were impressed by the overall quality of entries this year.

“Not only was there an increase in the number of gold medals awarded but the wines revealed greater diversity of styles,” he said.

“This year’s show demonstrated why there is such a demand throughout the world for our wines based on their clean and distinctive varietal characters that distinguish our wines from those of older, longer established wine regions that sell for prices much higher than ours.

“A New Zealand bottle of wine with its label intact can proudly proclaim its country of origin sitting on the dinner table anywhere in the world,” Dunleavy said.

Both wines are brand new releases, certified for export and in good volumes.

Are you a Daily Wine News subscriber? If not, click here to join our mailing list. It’s free!