Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Australian Wine Companion
One of those classic whites to take to yum cha, guzzle with a bucket of prawns, drag out of a regional bottle shop, ready to roll. It's all cut grass, green herbs, green apple and lime. It's brisk and crisp, if not slightly too assertive in acid profile, though mid-palate softness happens quite well too. A little wishy-washy, but that ups the drinkability. A good bet.
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Wine Enthusiast
On the riper end of the spectrum by Clare standards, there's green apple and pear along with fresh squeezed lime. A richness to the palate is lifted by razor blade lemony acidity. The sulphur is a little prominent at the moment; a young style that will benefit from a little more time 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.
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.