Baily and Baily Folio Riesling, Clare Valley, Australia 2014 (£6.69 down from £8.99, Waitrose) From sumptuous shiraz and shiraz-cabernet blends, to gentle but long-lived semillons, the Australians have re-cast a quite remarkable range of grape varieties in their own image over the years. One of the more unsung is riesling – if only because the grape variety itself, wherever it’s made, and despite years of passionate advocacy from its fans, has proved stubbornly resistant to mainstream success. At this time of the year, however, when both the sort of food we’re eating and, if we’re lucky, the weather call for a charge of dry and tangy refreshment, the Australian take on riesling is particularly welcoming, making this new addition to the Waitrose list a lime-tastic bargain at the offer price if you buy it before Tuesday.
Mount Horrocks Watervale Riesling, Clare Valley, Australia 2015 (from £16.99, invinitywines.co.uk; nywines.co.uk) The thing I love about the rieslings made in the Clare Valley, the Australian region most identified with the variety, is the uncompromising, eye-watering punch of the best examples. They can border on the austere when they’re young – tight and tense and full of contained energy in the case of master riesling maker Jeffrey Grosset’s justly celebrated Polish Hill Riesling, a wine that’s built do develop over decades, although the 2014 vintage (£25.95, slurp.co.uk) already had plenty of floral and lemon-and-lime charm and cleansing mineral flavours when I tasted it recently. The wines of Mount Horrocks are similarly wiry, steely and limey, with the Watervale happy to sit in cool dark place or join a plate of South East Asian spiced seafood right about now.
Dönnhoff Roxheimer Höllenpfad Riesling Trocken, Nahe, Germany 2014 (from £20.50, fourwallswine.com; averys.com; philglas-swiggot.com; justerinis.com) If Australian Riesling tends to be all about sugar-free leanness, the Germans have always been associated with an even less fashionable version of riesling, one which involves leavening the sharpness with a dose of sweetness. This can make for the most beautifully delicate off-dry white wines, which with their markedly low alcohol, are just right for summer daytime drinking: The Wine Society has a good one in the shape of Van Kesselstatt Piesporter Goldtröpfchen Spätlese 2013 (£16), a racy, lengthy mouthful in taste as well as nomenclature. But the Germans are no less adept at dry styles, as Helmut and Cornelius Dönnhoff’s gently incisive, floral, mineral single-vineyard bottling proves in some style.
Follow David on Twitter @Daveydaibach
