Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The slightly off-dry 2019 Hills & Valleys Riesling (12 grams per liter residual sugar) was picked slightly earlier than the Traditionale Dry Riesling. With only 9.5% alcohol, it's a fresh, mouthwatering example of Australian Riesling, offering intense citrus aromas, hints of honey and peach on the medium-bodied palate and a long, fine finish.
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Wine Enthusiast
This cuvée is a zingy, regionally expressive drop. Bright notes of apple, lemon and lime are underscored by honey and spice. Rapier-like acidity dominates the palate, but there’s plenty of fruit here, too. Balance it out with a Thai curry or an equally spicy, creamy dish.
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Vinous
Pale yellow. Fresh citrus fruit and floral qualities on the incisive nose, along with a chalky mineral overtone. Chewy and focused on the palate, offering racy lemon-lime and bitter quinine flavors and a spicy touch of ginger. Finishes silky and long, with the floral note sneaking back in.
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.