Winemaker Notes
Brilliant pale green with a fresh, vibrant nose displaying aromas of lemon, granny smith apple and some perfume and floral notes. This 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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Wine Enthusiast
A lemon-hued wine, it's a little closed at the moment, but it hints at great things to come. Its shy aromas of lime, grapefruit, white spice and ginger get a little braver as the wine warms. They lead to rapier-like acidity on the bone-dry palate, which slices through a beautiful, chalky texture full of lime fruit flavors. Pure, balanced and still a baby, this will come alive with bottle age. Drink now–2029.
Editors' Choice -
James Suckling
A very fresh, juicy and quite intensely flavored riesling with fresh lime juice, stony nuances and fragrant perfume, all combined on a polished, sleek palate.
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Decanter
This is a Clare Valley Riesling with pedigree and 2018 marks the 34th release of the Pikes Traditionale. The nose is bright and punchy with lime, candle wax and honey. The palate is oily but dry with a real kick of acid freshness on the finish and tropical fruit (mango pawpaw) throughout. With 3.5 g/L residual sugar there’s a lick of sweetness too, with adds body and balance. Drinking Window 2020 - 2024
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Vinous
Light, shimmering yellow. High-pitched citrus zest, green apple and pungent floral aromas carry a chalky mineral overtone. Nervy and sharply focused on the palate, offering pink grapefruit and orchard fruit flavors that deepen and spread out with air. Shows firm bite on the incisive finish, which leaves behind repeating citrus fruit and floral notes.
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.