O'Leary Walker Drs'
Cut Polish Hill River Riesling 2013
$30; 12% alcohol;
screw cap; 96+ points
Having recently raved about the O'Leary Walker Watervale Riesling of
this same year - "one of the finest white wines I've seen from South
Australia this vintage" - I was stonkered to then open this. It's all the Watervale is and more. While that was the race-stripped Lambo, this
is the Bugatti Veyron. It's at least as fast as the Lambo, but it's got
luxurious upholstery and plusher design and you can drive it down the shops.
And, oh yes, it costs more. It's spicier
- even peppery - and more complex, with that same fresh-sliced ginger, but also
musk sticks and other confectionary, like pashmak, the exquisite Persian
fairy-floss. Beneath all that stuff,
below the influence of the wild yeast and the fermentation on solids, below the
six months of weekly stirring of the yeast lees, lies a natural acidity with
all the unflinching authority of a piece of stainless steel 2cm marine
cable. And this comes from that barren,
stony, 41-years-old vineyard in the Polish Valley. If you let the bottle die slowly after
opening, like a glass a day for a week, all the pretties and the poshness and
the plush bits gradually fall away, revealing this remarkable spine. The wine will live for a very long time in the
appropriate cellar. But I usually prefer
them fresh and fast, and love this staunch beauty for what it is now. I can't imagine awarding it many more points
in, like, a decade, when many will swoon over its secondary and tertiary maturation
characters, which will be, no doubt, profound.
Considering all that, it's impossibly cheap, regardless of your
taste. This is as grown-up as great
white wine gets.
Tim Smith Wines Eden
Valley Riesling 2013
$25; 11.5% alcohol;
screw cap; 93+ points
Eden Valley, and what I call the High Barossa, often produces Riesling of
more austerity than most of Clare. But
the Drs' Cut is atypical of Clare. So's
this beauty from a 91-years-old vineyard in Eden Valley: it's a little further
out there than its neighbours, and more entertaining in its youth. It smells rich and buttery, like
struselkuchen, with slices of lemon, lime, blood orange and even curaçao orange
where the Barossa typically places apricot or apple, between the yeast cake
base and the crumbed strusel topping.
What started out smelling like soft white bread grew toasty after just
an hour's air, and then out jumped that sugary crumbed strusel and the damn
thing became a cake. Yum-O. One of the flavours gets close to Rose's Lime
Marmalade, just to add to the morning tea atmosphere of the whole effort. And
those citrus bits persist: even to the extent of the D-limonene from the bark
of Cascarilla, which gives Campari much of its savoury phenolic bitterness. But while it sure has dry phenolic tannins,
this is no bitter drink: everything's in harmony here. I can think of no better accompaniment than a
top-flight Barossa apricot struselkuchen and a cup of white tea at 1100
sharp.
No comments:
Post a Comment