Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wine & Spirits
A blend from three blocks on a hillside next to the winery in Watervale, this is an expansive and elegant riesling, dominated by the limestone undergirding of the soil in Watervale. Layers of white grapefruit, pear and apple flavors open over the salt and lime stoniness in a generous, silken richness that lasts. It’s a racy and powerful vintage of Mort’s Block.
100 BEST BUYS OF THE YEAR
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
More open-knit than the Mort’s Reserve, the 2015 Riesling Mort’s Block delivers white peach, lime blossom and apple notes plus a hint of coriander seed. The dry, light-bodied palate is relatively approachable with plenty of zesty flavor on offer and good length
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Wine Enthusiast
Lime sherbet and wet-stone aromas are classic for the variety and region. This is a light to medium-bodied wine, dry, with high acidity that drives it through a long, zesty finish. Drink it now with raw oysters or ceviche, or cellar it another five years to develop greater weight and complexity
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.