Winemaker Notes
Starbright pale lemon with green highlights. Dry Riesling Traditionale is fresh, crisp, and dry with bright lemon, lime and slate - all seamlessly wound around a spine of bright, mineral acidity providing length and drive.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
A very composed, dry Clare Valley riesling with fresh-lime, wet-stone and peach aromas, leading to a long, succulent and juicy palate that has a fresh lime and white-peach finish.
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Vinous
Pale chartreuse. Nervy, mineral-inflected lime, green apple and white peach aromas pick up hints of white flowers and ginger as the wine opens up. Dry and finely etched, showing firm tension and mineral lift to the fresh citrus and orchard fruit and green cardamon flavors. The mineral note drives a very long, focused finish that echoes the citrus fruit and mineral 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.