We had a fantastic tasting at Yalumba, where my favourite white wine was the Pewsey Vale ‘Contours’ Riesling 2007. (The name relates to the way the vines are planted on the contour of the hill) Still tasting really fresh, but the wine had developed an interesting complexity with notes of lemongrass, sage oil and honey. What a treat for me to taste a wine we stock over here where it was made! (£15.99 a bottle) and my advice would be buy a few bottles see how they develop over the years!!
Barossa is renowned in the UK for its Shiraz – and what has struck me is the shear diversity of styles between the valley floor grown grapes to the grapes grown higher up.
The old label of Barossa Shiraz being jammy and really high in alcohol is not true anymore, and there is a real freshness to the wines, fine tannins and personality -this comes from the older vines , lower yields and winemaking of course.
My favourites were Yalumba ‘Octavius’ Barossa Old Vine Shiraz ’06 which had a peppery, smokey nose with hints of violets and a long complex finish…and the Turkey Flat Conqueror Single Vineyard Shiraz 09, which had a lovely concentration of fruit and was incredibly balanced.