2025 Handpicked Wine Trial Batch Riesling $39
When William Dong began Handpicked Wines back in 2003, it traded as a virtual winery, with select growers and winemakers in established regions being enlisted to create special parcels of wine to sell under the Handpicked label.
In 2013, Dong started buying his own vineyards. The first of them – Capella in Mornington – also provided Handpicked Wines with its own winery. Today, the company owns six vineyards across Australia, with each specialising in table wines that celebrate unique expressions of variety, vintage and region/terroir.
Handpicked's Trial Batch range provides its winemaking team with opportunities to explore alternative varieties and/or winemaking techniques. It's hardly a free-wheeling, 'anything goes' approach, but the small volumes released nevertheless add interest to the company's growing portfolio of table wines.
The minimalist labelling and packaging gives something of a half-baked impression that each product has come straight from the winery tasting bench to the consumer. That's unconvincing and needs a re-think, or much more detailed text for the wine nerds likely to be the target audience.
All that set aside, this 100 percent Tasmanian-grown Riesling has plenty of style and character to recommend it, and comes from the excellent (and bountiful) 2025 vintage.
I must admit I don't see much that's cutting edge or experimental. Rather, this is a delightfully crisp and breezy young Riesling with subtle floral notes and limey/green apple flavour that sits very comfortably alongside freshly-shucked Tasmanian oysters. It weighs in at just 11.5 percent on the naughtiness scale.
The label states: 'Off Dry.' That seems very much at odds with the wine's slim palate profile and texture. However, few consumers will argue with: Racey. The acidity here is very assertive.
If the wine genuinely does have some significant residual sugar, it should prove to be very long-lived. Well in excess of 20 years in a cool dark hiding-place. If not, now-to-five-years hence should provide optimum drinking before the fruit starts to look a little thread-bare.
Source: Restaurant purchase, Astor Grill (Hobart)
Last page update: 30 July 2026