Jim Barry Watervale Riesling 2017
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This wine is a pale straw color in the glass. The nose has vibrant aromatics of lemon, orange blossom and fragrant floral musk. The wine is driven by a powerful depth of flavor lemon, lime and grapefruit with classic Watervale musk. Its clean line of acidity gives great length and drive to the generous offerings of flavor. The wine finishes with a gentle touch of mineralic texture to round out a mouth-watering, classic Watervale Riesling.
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In 1986, the Barry family purchased the Florita Vineyard in 1986, a property where John Vickery had planted vines for his Leo Buring Rieslings in 1962. The Barrys kept Vickery’s original vines and have planted more; they produce their top riesling from the site—Florita—as well as this Watervale bottling. It’s hard to find many $20 wines with the energy, drive and satisfaction this one offers. It’s pure Clare riesling, from the platinum color to the ghosting of lime flavors, floral, spicy, dense and weightless. It gives a tingle of talc and a dry peach savor that may make your mouth water, demanding an oyster. Come back to it in six or eight years and that acidity will be less demanding, the complexity of the wine then ready for an oyster pan roast. Best Buy
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Riesling possesses a remarkable ability to reflect the character of wherever it is grown while still maintaining its identity. A regal variety of incredible purity and precision, this versatile grape can be just as enjoyable dry or sweet, young or old, still or sparkling and can age longer than nearly any other white variety. Somm Secret—Given how difficult it is to discern the level of sweetness in a Riesling from the label, here are some clues to find the dry ones. First, look for the world “trocken.” (“Halbtrocken” or “feinherb” mean off-dry.) Also a higher abv usually indicates a drier Riesling.
The Clare Valley is actually a series of narrow north to south valleys, each with a different soil type and slightly different weather patterns along their stretch. In the southern heartland between Watervale and Auburn, there is mainly a crumbled, red clay loam soil called terra rossa and cool breezes come in from Gulf St. Vincent. A few miles north, in Polish Hill, is soft, red loam over clay; westerlies blowing in from the Spencer Gulf influece this area's climate.
The differences in soil, elevation, degree of slope and weather enable the region to produce some of Australia’s finest, aromatic, spicy and lime-pithy Rieslings, as well as excellent Shiraz, Cabernet Sauvignon and Malbec with ripe plummy fruit, good acid and big structure.
Clare Valley is an isolated farming country with a continental climate known for its warm and sunny days, followed by cool nights—perfect for wine grapes’ development of sugar and phenolic ripeness in conjunction with notable acidity levels.