Mount Barker, Western Australia 12.5% A/V Secured with a screwcap.

This beautifully poised example of Australian dry Riesling retains youthful straw/green tinges to its bright pale gold colour, an exemplary, lively nose of musky limes, green apples, freshly toasted bread, a beguiling minerality, quite unusual suggestions of herbaceousness and a latent whiff of petrol fumes as a top note. The palate carries this wine’s years with astonishing aplomb. Crisp and quite flinty with an abundance of freshly-squeezed lime juice and “Granny Smith” apple counterbalanced with bucketloads of yet-to-fully-integrate mouthpuckering minerally acidity. The finish is taught, dry as a bone and seemingly needs several more years to soften and allow the wonderful fruit to come to the fore and build more towards the back end. 90 points today with better things in store over the next 3-5 years. I estimate this excellent juice has between five and ten years good drinking ahead of it.    

Postscript - after two days open (cap on, in fridge) this wine has improved! More lemon pith and grapefruit to be found on nose and palate (the herbaceous and apply characters have all but disappeared) with the overt acid levels subsiding, allowing more palate length and better overall structure. 92 point rating on tonight’s performance. I’m very pleased I’ve sat on my stash of this for several years!

Sealed with a stelvin screwcap. 12.5% A/V

Infantile gleaming pale straw/green. Opened with a disturbingly excessive oily/petrolly bouquet, bordering on the reductive, thankfully almost totally dissipating with a good breathe. What follows is much more in keeping with my recollection when last tasted - an ethereal mix of honeyed toast, lime juice with an intense slate and minerale top note. Just a residue of the initial ”petrolly” character now adds to the overall equation. Brimming with gob-smacking, mineral-laden lime and redcurrant fruit, this most impressive, youthful Aussie Riesling displays the requisite integrated, crisp acidity and length of palate for a relatively long stint in any cool, dark cellar. Drink 2008-2016. (90 points)