A Decade of Grosset Rieslings

There’s no cause if it doesn’t have a champion. Jeff Grosset is the Archbishop Desmond Tutu of Australian riesling. I’d call him the Nelson Mandela, but as far as I’m aware he has never been to prison and is entirely bereft of political aspiration. Over the last decade Grosset has not only been our best riesling maker, but also its most committed and eloquent advocate. This tasting, of the last decade of each of his signature Clare Valley rieslings, amply justifies his place as Australia’s most celebrated contemporary riesling maker.

It’s been around ten years since the rieslings of Jeff Grosset, John Wade, Brian Croser and the then John Vickery-led team at Leo Buring gave the media and the trade something to talk up, although these guys and other leading riesling makers have been at it for much longer than that.

So blinkered towards chardonnay had the Australian wine scene become that nobody really imagined that it would take so long for riesling to regain its footing as a premier white variety in this country, or as they say in contemporary ad-speak, a ‘front of mind’ proposition for white wine drinkers. It wasn’t that long ago that you could buy either of Jeff Grosset’s rieslings for less than you would pay for a fourth-rate unwooded chardonnay from the Mornington Peninsula or Yarra Valley. Even though the better wines have become more expensive, riesling still offers the best value for money at virtually all price points in which it competes.

Two winemakers stand out as strong influences on Jeff Grosset’s winemaking career, Leo Buring riesling legend John Vickery and the rare winemaking genius of Philip Shaw. Although he was young and impressionable when he first became aware of John Vickery’s approach to the making of ‘pristine’ examples of riesling and the ‘sheer quality’ of his wines, Grosset believes that Vickery would have had a huge impact on his winemaking at any time.

He can’t think of a more lateral-thinking person than Philip Shaw. ‘He assumes nothing and to assume anything is at your own peril if you’re working with him. He questions everything, and working with him has been most significant with me in terms of my own thought processes.’

His pair of world-class Clare Valley rieslings, known as Watervale Riesling and Polish Hill respectively, are modern Australian benchmarks, yet Grosset still regards each as work in progress. While neither wine reflects any degree of tinkering in the winery, it’s in the vineyard where Grosset is now refining his art. His focus, he says, is entirely on the purity of the fruit his vineyards can deliver.

‘I don’t want to do other things to make a mark or make my wines more complex early on. I always opt for purity first, for complexity follows later on. You don’t have to chase it’, he says. Were Grosset to be instead a maker of Marlborough sauvignon blanc, he says he’d be doing much the same thing; ignoring winemaking artefacts from extended lees, contact, oak maturation and malolactic fermentation to deliver the pure, intense fruit he enjoys from the region.

Such is his determination not to clutter his fruit with extraneous influences that Grosset uses at least three different neutral yeasts for his fermentations. He won’t use a single yeast in case it imparts a specific yeast character, and judging by a typical conversion rate of 12.3? Baume at harvest to around 13.0 alcohol, he chooses some pretty efficient microbes. ‘We go to all this trouble not to have other influences in the wines. If we start with these flavours and want them to come through in their best form, we don’t want to see other interfering characters as well’, he says.

If there’s such a thing as a Grosset riesling style, what is it? He says he aims for dryness, fineness and persistence. He’s not as fussed as some makers over the initial impact on the palate nor on the fruitiness of the aroma in a wine’s youth, but places most emphasis on the finish. There’s also a barely concealed power about the Polish Hill wines, due largely to the ripeness and concentration of its fruit, with an assertive spine of acidity just beneath. This contrasts neatly with the rather broader and richer palate of the Watervale Riesling, its typically more tropical and forward aromas, and its earlier-maturing palate of softer acids. This vineyard has a shallow layer of red loam over limestone, into which the roots are able to penetrate and assist the vines to resist the droughts and warm vintages not uncommon in the Clare Valley.

Some Grosset rieslings are distinctly spicy, the Polish Hill especially, an aspect highlighted in some vintages by a level of volatile acidity above the subliminal, which Jeff Grosset ascribes to the low nutrient levels of the fragile, degraded soils at the Polish Hill vineyards. These days Grosset prevents the development of volatility, which he says detracts from the seamlessness of the palate, by carefully adding the yeast nutrient diammonium phosphate to any ferment deficient in nitrogen.

By quickly processing the fruit with a rapid crushing, destemming and draining, Grosset is able to sidestep the more heavily extracted pressings influences favoured by some makers in Alsace and the Rheingau, making instead finer, more elegant and longer-living rieslings without much phenolic extraction. If riesling is made by whole bunch pressing, he says it’s difficult to avoid some of the more phenolic fractions. He is also a strong advocate of fastidiously protecting his wines against oxidative handling, agreeing entirely with Vickery that it leads to the appearance in wines of keroseney flavours, which he finds totally unacceptable. In the twenty or so wines which made up this tasting, only one, the 1991 Polish Hill, revealed anything resembling the kerosene character that many actually believe enhances a top-class riesling.

The 2000 vintage was the first sealed by Jeff Grosset and a host of other Clare Valley riesling makers under the reworked Stelvin seal. It’s been so successful for him that he’s thinking of upping the percentage in 2001. I have included both bottlings of the two 2000 rieslings in this tasting, simply because they are already completely different wines, to an extent I would not have believed had I not tasted them. Please login to post comment