Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The Mesh 2015 Riesling is gorgeous with an expressive lime cordial and orange blossom nose, with hints of petrol, honey and coriander seeds. This Riesling is light-bodied, dry and crisp, and there are plenty of citrus and spice flavors leading to the perfumed finish. Rating: 92+
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Wine Enthusiast
This joint venture between the Grosset and Hill Smith families continues to shine. It's tight, lean and austere at this young age, showing the delicate yet powerful notes of tart lime and crushed stone that bode well for aging up to 15 years or so.
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Wine & Spirits
Jeffrey Grosset and Robert Hill-Smith collaborate on this wine, a blend from two Eden Valley vineyards: Grossman, planted in 1944, and Miles, planted in 1982. Both are north-facing slopes at 1,400 feet. The harvest team picks alternate rows for Grosset and Hill-Smith, who make their own wines separately, later meeting to taste the various lots and decide on a final blend. In 2015, the wine is juicy, linear and clean, more fruit expressive than Grosset’s Clare Valley rieslings, with scents of orange blossoms and a succulent texture, the kind of clean, talc-edged riesling that should develop into a marmalade-rich maturity with ten years in bottle.
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.
Higher in elevation and topographically more dramatic than the Barossa Valley floor, Eden Valley abuts it to its south and east. While it is a bit of an extension of Barossa, Eden Valley is topographically different than the pastoral Barossa Valley, and is composed of rocky hills and eucalyptus groves.
Recognizing Eden Valley’s potential with Riesling in the 1960s and 70s, producers started to move their Riesling production from Barossa to these better sites where schist soils on hilltops would produce more steely, tart and age-worthy examples. A most famous site, planted by Colin Gramp, called Steingarten, today produces one of the most outstanding Australian Rieslings. Youthful Eden Valley Rieslings express floral, grapefruit and mineral, while with time in the bottle, they become increasingly toasty and complex.
Riesling isn’t the only grape the region can grow; undeniably at lower altitudes Shiraz does very well. Mount Edelstone is a notable vineyard as well as the Hill of Grace, which boasts healthy Shiraz vines well over 100 years old. This is the only Australian region where Merlot has a made a name for itself and Chardonnay can be spectacular, particularly from the High Eden subregion in the southern valley.