New Zealand Riesling: The Most Underrated Wine in the Country

Winemaker Paul Pujol has been making the case for Central Otago Riesling for twenty years. The 2024 vintage from Rocky Point’s schist soils is his strongest argument yet.

“I think Riesling is the shining star of Central Otago.” Paul Pujol has said this for years, and the people who have been paying attention know he is right. The gap between what this variety produces on the right Central Otago site and how widely it is understood remains wide. For those who find it, that gap is the whole point.

The reputation problem

Riesling carries a kind of baggage that most grapes are spared. Decades of off-dry German bottles and supermarket-friendly sweetness have created an association that is persistent and largely undeserved, particularly when it comes to dry Riesling: the style that makes the most serious demands of the variety, and of the place where it is grown.

Without residual sugar to smooth the edges or fill the gaps, there is nowhere to hide. The site has to earn the wine. The season has to cooperate. The winemaking has to stay out of the way. When all three align, the result is a wine with precision, depth, and the structural integrity that allows it not just to last in the bottle, but to become something more over time.

That is what we are making at Rocky Point. And the 2024 vintage is the clearest evidence yet of what this site is capable of.

What Central Otago does to Riesling

Central Otago sits on the 45th parallel south, sheltered from the west by the Southern Alps. The result is a semi-continental climate unlike anywhere else in New Zealand: warm, dry days, cool nights, and a diurnal temperature range that forces the vine to work slowly through a long growing season rather than pushing for easy ripeness.

For Riesling, this is close to ideal. The variety has always been at its best under thermal stress. It is precisely these conditions that build aromatic complexity, preserve natural acidity, and produce wines that carry both intensity and freshness in the same glass. The schist soils that dominate our Bendigo sites add a mineral precision on top of that: something particular to this place, not borrowed from somewhere else.

Rocky Point: one site, one block

The Riesling at Prophet’s Rock comes from a single block of just over two hectares on our Rocky Point Vineyard. It is steep enough that working the vine rows means watching where you put your feet, rising from 226 metres to 351 metres above the valley floor, with Lake Dunstan visible far below.

The soil is schist-based, high in mineral content, and low in vigour. What makes this block distinctive is large rafts of solid schist throughout: actual slabs of ancient metamorphic material sitting just beneath the surface. The vines find what they need, but they work for it.

Yields consistently average 28 to 30 hl/ha. In practice, this means one bunch per shoot, with shoulders and wings removed, and a further green-thin at veraison. We farm this block with the same intensity we apply to our finest Pinot Noir, because the site demands it and the wine reflects it.

How Prophet’s Rock Dry Riesling is made

Farming sets the standard; the winery’s job is to honour it.

The fruit is hand-picked and whole-bunch pressed slowly, over five to six hours. Fermentation is carried out using only indigenous wild yeast in old barrels — the approach Paul Pujol embraced across six Grand Cru Riesling vineyards in Alsace, at Maison Kuentz-Bas, before arriving in Central Otago — with no inoculation and no shortcuts to a predictable outcome. It typically runs for five to seven months. When it finishes, the wine remains on its gross lees without racking until bottling just before the following vintage, then rests in bottle for at least a year before release.

The long press, the wild ferment, the extended lees contact: each step is in service of the wine that this particular block of schist wants to produce, rather than the wine that would be easier or faster to make.

The 2024 vintage

The 2024 growing season at Rocky Point was, by Paul’s account, an absolute classic.

Winter finished mild. Spring was stable, with no frost. Fruit set in December under warm, dry conditions. January and February carried through with the same warmth before the weather cooled in late February. March was mild and unhurried: only five days reached 25°C. From mid-March through to the end of harvest in April, conditions remained stable, giving the team the flexibility to pick on flavour and ripeness rather than against the calendar. The grapes held their acidity throughout.

The aromatics open with jasmine, honeysuckle, key lime, lemon zest, and a thread of spice running underneath everything else. On the palate there is real tension and texture, with citrus and stone fruit carried by structured precision and freshness. The length is very long.

It is a wine that changes as the evening goes on, showing more of itself in the second and third glass than it does in the first pour. Collectors who put bottles away will find it richly rewarded over the long term.

Only 18 barrels were made.

The case for cellaring

Riesling, more than almost any other white grape, transforms with time. The primary citrus and floral aromatics of youth give way to something deeper: toasty, honeyed, layered in ways that cannot be produced in the winery, only unlocked by it.

The structural argument for ageing the Prophet’s Rock Dry Riesling is well-founded: high natural acidity, 11.5% alcohol, extended lees contact in old barrels. These are the conditions a wine needs to develop meaningfully over years rather than months. The Wine Advocate awarded the 2021 vintage 96 points, with a note that it was “insanely underpriced for the quality and site-specific eloquence.”

We think the 2024 is even better.

The 2024 Prophet’s Rock Dry Riesling

The 2024 Dry Riesling is available now. Quantities are small and this wine always finds its home quickly. Prophet’s Rock Wine Club members receive early access and first allocation.

If you have not tried this wine before, the 2024 is the vintage to start with. If it is already in your cellar, it is worth adding more.