Winemaker Notes
Brilliant pale green with a fresh, vibrant nose displaying aromas of lemon, granny smith apple and some perfume and floral notes. Hills & Valley Riesling is fresh and crisp with a palate full of lemon, lime and apple flavors. The wine has a touch of sweetness balanced with nice acidity providing both length and structure to the soft finish.
Professional Ratings
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Vinous
Green-tinged straw. Vibrant grapefruit, green apple and honeysuckle scents and flavors carry a chalky mineral overtone. Dry, nervy and precise, showing very good clarity and back-end lift. Puts on weight with air and finishes long and lively, with resonating citrus pith and pear skin qualities.
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Wine Enthusiast
This is a bright, bouncy and utterly Aussie Riesling packed full of pretty aromatics like lavender, talcum powder, cherry blossoms and lime zest along with wisps of orange rind. The palate bursts with juicy, limey fruit and florals, crackling with acidity and a slightly chalky finish.
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.