As we emerge from the 2023 vintage, everything has well and truly made its way from the vines and into wines. Perhaps the most exciting of them all, our new WildChild Riesling and WildChild Carbonic Zinfandel. The new WildChild range is a little left of centre; an exciting new concept hatched by our Vigneron Anita Robinson. This new line was born out of a desire to experiment and try something new with our incredible Talisman fruit. 

The WildChild Carbonic Zinfandel is made with whole bunches of fruit spending two weeks wrapped up in an open fermenter before pressing. The combination of the fermenting process and earlier picked fruit results in a lighter and spidery wine; fresh and zesty. A perfect red to enjoyed with a little chill in summer. 

Our WildChild white, the Riesling, is a barrel ferment. Unlike our mainstay Riesling – we whole bunch pressed the Riesling closers directly into barrels, pressing juices and all. After four months of wild ferment in the barrels the result is distinctly a Talisman Riesling but with an overlay of lees, cloudy juice characters, richer palate and more complex flavours. We anticipate it will age well for 10 years or so. 

Alongside this new and exciting range, we have our Talisman heroes returning to the line up this vintage. The cool season really allowed full flavour development and the retention of high natural acid in fruit – so our two very consistent mainstays, the Chardonnay and Riesling, are going to be exceptional.

The weather was a key factor in the slower development of our reds for the 2023 vintage – so the colours and tannin are more intense than we usually see. It suggests that we’ll end up with some much deeper colours in our final wines, and possibly even more age worthiness. 

The final update from this latest vintage is our new sparkling Riesling. An idea which came about – to use our Riesling pressings in a fun way. Following a small (but very successful) trial – we are very excited to bring this fresh, limey, apple, bubbly, all rounder sparkling to the Talisman family of wines.