Ceres Bannockburn Black Rabbit Riesling 2018

Ceres Wines (now Dicey wines after 2021) is one of top quality wine producers in Bannockburn, Central Otago. It’s built by Dicey brothers James and Matt. One works as a viticulturist and the other as the winemaker. The name “Ceres” refers to Roman goddess of agriculture, stove, fertility. But also a Homage to the South African town “Ceres”, where the family originally migrated from. The winery produces a number of terroir expressive fine wines from four different vineyards that they own and operate. The four vineyards are “Black Rabbit”, “Full Circle”, “Swansong” and “Inlet”. Despite all being inside Bannockburn sub-region, they yield fruits of very different styles.

The fruit for this wine was grown on Black Rabbit vineyard on Cairnmuir Road, Bannockburn. Black Rabbit is a 3.46 hectare site on an elevation of 250–315m with ancient geology approximately 400 million years old. The site is a steep North-facing slope with windblown schist loess over bedrock schist. The Riesling was planted in 2008.

A warm start to the season saw an earlier than normal bud burst and a lack of any damaging frosts. An excellent calm, warm period of weather during flowering and fruit-set meant a decent crop was set. As the summer evolved it became clear that the months of November to January were setting records for how dry and hot they were. At one stage it looked likely we would be harvesting in late February, which is unheard of, but a very cool and wet February and March saw the season saved. There was no disease pressure despite the wet as the start of the season had been so dry. The grapes were harvested starting in mid March and after a compressed harvest all the grapes were in the winery by mid April. The fruit was in excellent condition and full of flavour.

The fruit for this wine was harvested on the 13th March in excellent condition. The fruit was de-stemmed and pressed to tank where it was settled for a week, before racking slightly cloudy for ferment. The wine was fermented with native yeasts, the wine stopped naturally with 35g/L of residual sugar. The wine was filtered but not fined before being bottled in June.