Winemaker Notes
While it will improve immeasurably with time in the bottle that balance gives it an approachability especially when consumed with a platter of natural oysters or a dish of poached whiting fillets with a squeeze of lime.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The coy, youthfully mute 2015 Riesling Polish Hill has a mineral and wet pebble laced nose over notes of lime leaves, yuzu and green mango. The dry, light-bodied palate is positively charged with electric citrus fruit that carries straight through the very, very long finish. It really needs 4-5 years in bottle before it enters its drinking window.
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Wine & Spirits
Grosset has farmed this 20-acre site north of Mount Horrocks since 1981, the vines planted in what amounts to solid rock: a thin layer of shale, and a little clay over blue slate. The small, concentrated berries that produce this riesling give a youthfully firm wine, its structure bright and brisk, with a talc-like mineral edge that hides the fruit expression. Polish Hill typically requires eight to ten years to show itself, this one hinting at its flavor complexity through notes of tarragon and thyme. For the cellar.
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Wine Spectator
There's a floral backdrop of chamomile to the lithe lime, green apple and white pepper notes. Finds a way to be both powerful and subtle. Drink now through 2025.
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.