Jim Barry Lodge Hill Riesling 2018
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Winemaker Notes
This wine shows a brilliant pale straw colour in the glass. The nose lifts with aromas of kaffir lime, pear and ginger spice. Delicately poised with mouth-watering acidity, this Riesling is balanced with a burst of lime juiciness and lifted orange blossom florals. The palate has great presence, with fine chalkiness leading into a persistent finish.
Professional Ratings
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Decanter
A quintessential Clare Valley Riesling, with concentrated yet vibrant lime cordial, white blossom and fresh lime juice characters leaping from the glass. Pristine and almost squeaky clean on the lengthy palate, it is thrilling drinking now but the racy acidity should ensure it matures well.
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Wine Enthusiast
This vintage of Lodge Hill is another solid and austere expression of the grape Clare Valley has carved its reputation with. It's a little reductive at first, taking some vigorous swirling in the glass for those oniony aromas to blow off, but when they do, delicate lime leaf, apple blossom and talc aromas appear. The palate is just as tightly wound, with crunchy acidity and a crisp apple-y finish. Give this another year or two in the bottle to gain more complexity and drinkability.
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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.