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.
This article was written by Campbell Mattinson, founder of The Winefront and mattinson, and former chief editor of Halliday.
When you pick up a wine book and see thousands of top-scoring wines, it’s hard to know which wine to choose. Mattinson guides you through this maze, giving you an honest view of the best Australian wines, the best wine stories, the best wine producers, the best value wines and simply, the best tasting wines. Importantly, Mattinson will tell you about the top-rated wines and also about the underrated wines. In short, Mattinson knows Australian wines inside and out.
Mattinson has been a photo-journalist since 1987. For the past 25 years he’s been a voice that you can trust when you’re looking for the best wines. He’s the only Australian to have won the Australian Wine Communicator of the Year Award more than once. He’s a past winner of a Louis Roederer International Wine Media Award, and is the author of the award-winning book The Wine Hunter. He’s not afraid to put a score beside a wine. But what he’d rather do, is tell you the wine’s story.
