Thistledown Gorgeous Grenache Blanc 2025
An explosion of flavour meets suave, seductive personality! Bright, tangy citrus laced fruit with hints of honeysuckle and lemon balm. Taut, yet textured and complex, this is a beautifully crafted white that breaks the mould.
“Oxidative handling, then native ferment in older oak and concrete egg; four months on lees. This is lifted and intensely aromatic, with makrut lime, nashi, custard apple, chilled smashed cucumber, apple blossom, Meyer lemon and rambutan. It’s lighter in weight, without the blowsy texture the grape can have; instead, it’s got good vigour and fruitful vibrancy, a faint pithiness adding palate detail. This can take a good chill while retaining its flavour, which ups the already considerable refreshment factor.”
92 Points – Halliday
“The 2025 Gorgeous Grenache Blanc leads with primary banana ester and lifted tropical fruits—lashings of white pineapple and ripe pear. The fruit for this cuvée is predominantly from the Riverland, with some McLaren Vale fruit as well. It was mainly wild-fermented in stainless and 200-liter seasoned French barrels, with a foudre component as well. The wine is tightly coiled at this very early stage of its life, while the foudre and barrels have lent the wine some complexity to the texture and the top notes. This is a tidy little wine here that is well suited to the Australian summer culture. 13% alcohol, sealed under screw cap.”
90 Points – The Wine Advocate
“This is distinctly floral, with hints of gardenia and jasmine swirling around a core of apricot, tangerine and mango flavors that are light and crisp. A fresh lemon oil note lingers on the finish.”
90 Points – Wine Spectator
“Oodles of ripe tropical and citrus fruit open, from pineapple rind to lemon zest, with a green tea and subtle beeswax character beneath. It’s mid-weight with intriguing texture and a slight grip that gives it food friendly appeal. ”
90 Points – Wine Enthusiast
Grenache is Australia’s signature grape variety and we’re slightly obsessed with it. The white version remains rare locally but is capable of beautifully textured, citrus-laced wines with serious drinkability. This release is 100% Grenache Blanc, sourced from Riverland plantings where the variety is typically trained on VSP trellis rather than traditional bush vines. Bright, tangy citrus fruit sits alongside hints of honeysuckle and lemon balm, delivering a wine that is taut yet textured, complex, and quietly seductive.
Winemaking followed an oxidative approach ahead of a wild ferment in both concrete egg and seasoned French oak. No malolactic fermentation was allowed, with four months on lees building palate weight and structure before bottling. The 2025 vintage marked an early, compressed season driven by consistently warm, dry conditions and minimal rainfall. Picking began in late January and wrapped before the end of March, resulting in a smaller crop with greater concentration, power, and tension compared to the more moderate, aromatic vintages that preceded it.
The good folks at Thistledown believe that Grenache is Australia’s signature grape variety and they’re slightly obsessed with it. This is a grape that has been much maligned by the Australian industry over the years. Its traditionally high cropping levels made it a favorite for years with growers and corporate wine entities, and as a result it was never taken very seriously, as few wines of quality were made from it, until recently. While Thistledown is not alone in their endeavors to make great Grenache, they are unique in their methods and it is for this reason that they are now unanimously considered to be Australia’s top Grenache specialist. Much of this has to do with their approach to picking times, to the very detailed, gentle ferments that include their layer cake fermentation method – where they build multiple alternate layers of whole bunches with layers of berries, inside concrete vessels for their ferments. The mesh-like structure of the ferment allows juice movement within the vessel without the need for mechanical extraction and so this process results in a very gentle infusion rather than an extraction – a process more akin to making tea, than to making coffee! After years of experimentation, Thistledown have found that this process results in wines that are most faithful to their site, best able to narrate the stories of the vineyard and of its growers.
