By Huon Hooke, The Real Review
September 8th, 2026
Stephanie Toole has released the latest Mount Horrocks Cordon Cut Riesling from the 2026 vintage, after ‘resting’ the vineyard in 2025.
This is one of the most individual and beautiful sweet wines made in Australia, using a process Stephanie has refined and perfected over a lengthy period: she has more than 20 years’ experience producing this wine.
The super-charged sweetness of the juice is produced by snipping the branches of the vin
es to cut the flow of sap and allow the bunches to dehydrate slightly on the vine, before hand-harvesting them. The juice is fermented cold and the process is stopped when the right balance of sweetness is arrived at. With the 2026, this left 146 grams per litre of residual sugar in the wine. That’s at the high end of the German auslese grade. Alcohol is 11.4%.
The accompanying picture, taken in the Mount Horrocks vineyard during the 2026 harvest, depicts the bunches as they came off the vines. It clearly shows that there are bunches with only raisined berries and other bunches with green, fully turgid riesling berries as they look normally, without dehydration.
The Cordon Cut grapes just harvested off the vine. Mount Horrocks Wine
There are two reasons for keeping some non-raisined bunches: to keep freshness, primary fruit flavour and vitality in the wine, and a more pragmatic processing consideration. Too many raisined berries and there’s a risk of hoses blocking and exploding, and pumps unable to pump the must.
Stephanie says the vineyard was rested in 2025 because the vines needed a rest, and because she had made a lot of the 2024, enough to tide her over for two years of sales.
While very young and still a little yeasty, the 2026 is pristinely floral and fresh with a seamless balance between fruit, sweetness and acidity on the palate. It’s a beautiful wine to have with sweet courses such as fruit salad and ice-cream, or savoury things like chicken liver pâté, cheeses or fish with a buttery sauce.
It’s AUD $46 a half-bottle.