2025 Charteris The Lake Front Terrace Vineyard Riesling

The Lakefront Terrace is a new vineyard for us, owned and tended to by Andy and Misha Wilkinson, who we have known to more than 10 years. They planted the first vines on the site in 2004 with the Riesling sitting on a northwest slope between 262m and 282m above sea level. The landscape tells the story of multiple glaciations and the impact of millennia of ice battling granite, carving out steep sided valleys carpeted in gravelly schist and loam soils, the Lakefront Terrace vineyard is a case in point. From a mild winter, the ski season almost didn’t get going, and relatively gentle spring, the growing season got away to an excellent start with good soil moisture resulting in a slightly later than normal budburst. However, with the beginning of November came the challenge of frost, and there was a belter in the first week of November which laid waste to a few of our source vineyards. The location of the Riesling vineyard, with its steep Northerly position, afforded the new shoots enough protection from the frost that it escaped almost completely unscathed, lucky for us. The rest of summer was gentle and obliging with warm and generally dry conditions with well-timed rains keeping vineyards looking fresh and healthy. March and April cooled off with the coldest morning since the previous November frost arriving in the negatives on the morning of the 9th of April, the day we picked this Riesling.