First Ridge Vermentino 2025
$28, 12% alcohol, screwcap, Mudgee.
This is a dry-but-fruity white wine with good flesh, vigour and all-round polish. It’s built around a core of fruit salad-like flavours but then grapefruit, herb, slate and lychee characters add whispers of difference. It’s an easy-to-like wine but there’s nuance if you go looking. It’s (very) easy to recommend. 91 points.
Campbell Mattinson has been an independent journalist, wine critic and photographer for forty years. He founded The Winefront, is a former chief editor of the Halliday Wine Companion (and former editor of Halliday magazine), and is the only Australian to have won the Australian Wine Communicator of the Year Award more than once. He is 100% independent, and tastes between 5,000 and 10,000 wines each year, blind and in comparative brackets as often as is practicable.
Mattinson is also the founder of the Mattinson Photography business.
