Welcome Back.

Welcome back. Sounds like a telephone company ad, but I don’t mean it that way. Welcome back to riesling. It is dawning on more and more Australians that while being perfectly sound, flavoursome and well-made, most chardonnay is simply boring. Regrettably, unwooded chardonnays are enjoying a bright, breezy moment in the sun, as we shun the oak which has clouded our perceptions of chardonnay for so long.

But why pay upwards of $15 for a simple, juicy, one-dimensional unwooded chardonnay when it rarely has the length of palate to adequately accompany food? Especially when there’s a wealth of intensely-flavoured, bone-dry, racy, complete white wine from the riesling variety? And for around 70 of the price? Commonsense must prevail.

Interestingly, it’s one of riesling’s quirks which has helped to hold back its acceptance over the last decade. Riesling wines tend to look their worst between, say, eighteen months of age and five years. During this time, they are neither one thing nor the other; neither youthful and zesty nor complex, mouthfilling and mature. They are instead moving through an almost inevitable flat point, a sort of confused adolescence, if you like. Yet until recently, if you bought a riesling, chances were that it would be right in the middle of this questionable age.

Economics are helping to see riesling through. Winemakers, keener than ever for early cash, are selling their riesling sooner than ever before, mere weeks – or just days – after bottling. You now have at least a year to enjoy a young riesling prior to its mid-age decline, plenty of time to seek out those whose fresh flavours, crisp acids and restrained elegance best suit your taste.

There are basically three styles of dry Australian riesling. The first is the rarest – that modelled around the great wines made by the likes of John Vickery – the present Barossa Valley-based winemaker for Richmond Grove – while at Leo Buring in the ’60s and ’70s. Made from two of Australia’s classic riesling areas – the Clare and Eden Valleys – these wines are picked early, while the grapes are yet to develop rich intensity of flavour or the sugar to make a wine much beyond 11.5 alcohol. Tight, lean and shy while young, these wines habitually look more youthful and attractive than their age should otherwise allow. At their best, they can live for two decades and more.

Unlike the Hollywood grannies who still grace the magazine covers at an age most of us are entering our dotage, there’s no trickery or plastic surgery involved with these wines. Their secret is their balance; their fitness and vitality their acidity and freshness.

Some South Australian rieslings are still fashioned in this style, but they are becoming rare indeed. The top Leo Buring Rieslings today, given the ‘Leonay’ tag by their makers 9/10, are generally riper and earlier to mature than the classics of yesteryear, many of which continue to look younger and more lively than they have any right to do.

Good news is that small growers at another of Australia’s principal riesling regions, the Great Southern of WA, are frequently making similarly tight, long-living wines. Look for labels such as Alkoomi 8/10, Jingalla 6/10 and Plantagenet 8/10.

The second breed of riesling emerged in the mid ’70s, when winemakers started toying with riper rieslings, fashioning more up-front fruit-driven wines which offered more intensity and flavour while young. Many were quite sweet by today’s standards. Benchmarks of the day, like the Hardys Siegersdorf 1975, were copied furiously, so many makers simply lost the plot entirely, creating excessively saccharine wines, welcome casualties are far as most us were concerned in the first chardonnay frenzies of the early 1980s.

Riesling makers also experimented with very aromatic wine yeasts, a situation which absurdly culminated in consumers and retailers refusing to pay attention to rieslings which were not fermented with yeasts like Brian Croser’s ‘R2′.

It was Croser himself, whose Petaluma Rieslings 9/10 brought sanity back to the riper, more forward riesling style. Electing not to leave them residually sweet, Croser introduced us to the so-called ‘dry spatlese’ style, which simply means that fully-ripened grapes are fermented instead to complete dryness. Most contemporary Australian riesling has been influenced by this approach, which although sacrificing some of the exceptional longevity of the Vickery style, does engender mouthfilling flavour, plus surprising richness and mouthfeel. Great examples are made in the Clare and Eden Valleys, the Great Southern and Victoria.

The third breed of modern riesling is that which is today most widely made by Orlando, although other makers have experimented with and employed similar techniques. The chemicals principally responsible for the flavour of riesling are terpenes, a proportion of which may actually remain ‘inactive’ in a finished wine, even if present. Orlando’s approach is that it makes a great deal of sense to maximise the terpene content of it riesling grapes and then to make certain that as high a percentage of terpenes are ‘switched on’ in its finished wines.

Consequently, after a great deal of work in vineyard and winery, Orlando’s rieslings do taste different from the budget-priced Jacob’s Creek 6/10, to the excellent St Helga 8/10 and even the premium individual vineyard wine, aptly labelled ‘Steingarten’ 9/10. Orlando rieslings are especially intense, but come with characteristic confection and bath powder fragrances. I can only assume that it’s their techniques in the winery which enable their rieslings to develop without experiencing the adolescence of other wines, for they march on and on, seemingly oblivious of standard riesling behaviour.

There are more reasons than ever before to return to riesling. No other white wine offers comparable quality, value and cellaring potential. And with the breadth of riesling talent in Australia today, it’s not going to bore you again.


Breakaway:

Ten Classic Modern Rieslings:

Petaluma Clare 9
Howard Park Great Southern 9
Jeffrey Grosset Polish Hill Clare 9
Skillogalee Clare 8
Tim Knappstein Clare 8
Mitchelton Goulburn Valley 9
Delatite Mansfield 9
Henschke Eden Valley 9
Pewsey Vale Eden Valley 8
Mitchell Clare 8 Please login to post comment