All of a sudden, Australian riesling has rediscovered its bite. Riesling now has a sleeker shape, a firmer chassis and another cog in its gearbox. It also has an impressive range of new features as standard. The best contemporary Australian rieslings have more flavour, more complexity and more bite (acidity) than we have seen since the halcyon days of the legendary winemaker John Vickery’s tenure at Leo Buring in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Vickery’s wines were typically low in alcohol, high in acid and deeply flavoured. Well-cellared bottles can still drink well today. Arthur O’Conner, the Seppelt winemaker at Great Western, is responsible for one of the emergent breed of new Australian riesling, the Seppelt Drumborg, and he considers himself lucky to have worked with Vickery. ‘There aren’t any real changes between what we do now and he did then’, he says, ‘but there’s an acceptance today that riesling can be a leaner, high acid wine again. People are also confident that they can make tight, stylish wines, and consumers are confident that they will cellar.’ O’Connor is astonished at the degree to which peoples’ expectations of riesling have changed. ‘We used to be happy to make sweet riesling with nearly ten grams of residual sugar’, he says. ‘Instead, the modern wines are fully dry, but have more flesh and complexity.’ While Australians has always felt good about their riesling, it has always struggled for acceptance in foreign markets. Despite a lack of international demand for this country’s drier wines, our makers weren’t prepared to leave them sweet, which was considered a compromise to quality. So the situation remained, until the advent over the last decade of bone-dry riesling from Austria. Greeted with acclaim across Europe and the US, these wines have shorted the circuit, but have also created an opportunity for the Australian style. However, many Australian winemakers recognised that the modern European wines tended to offer more intensity, complexity, structure and refreshment. So the challenge was on. Frankland Estate’s Judi Cullam has really pushed the limits of riesling in the Frankland River area of Western Australia. She’s studied approach of Europe’s best makers. ‘They’re absolutely dedicated to each bunch, and are extremely fastidious when picking’, she says. ‘They then bring fruit in from the vineyard in small quantities, before fermenting in small volumes. You’ll see lots of different ferments from a single vineyard.’ According to riesling importer Patrick Walsh, ‘The further we go down this path and the further we push the notion of single vineyard rieslings, the more exciting the variety will become’. Matthew Pick is the young gun behind the last two vintages of Leo Buring’s Leonay Eden Valley Riesling. He attributes this wine’s startling recent improvement to work in the vineyard, where crop levels have been reduced to a low six tonnes per hectare, causing fruit to ripen earlier and more evenly. ‘We take a less interventionist approach with our winemaking so our wines really reflect their patch of dirt’, he says. ‘As we do this, we’re beginning to learn more about the blocks, so each new vintage is like greeting an old friend. We know what to do and when to harvest.’ Patrick Walsh believes the best Austrian riesling makers are merging ideas both old and new. ‘They’re embracing everything traditional, and infusing that with high-tech practices and modern equipment to bring out the truest and fullest expressions of their vineyards, without being clouded by winemaking artefact’, he says. ‘They get more interesting and more exotic flavours and less straight up-and-down flavours than those employing a more normal handling of their fruit.’ Some Australians are following suit. They’re playing around to varying degrees with techniques such as oxidative handling with low sulphur levels, which is often followed by a decent shot of sulphur dioxide at bottling. Others are deploying ‘wild’ or ‘indigenous’ yeasts. Some makers are using a pre-fermentation cold soak, encouraging the development of rounder textures and secondary flavours. Others are playing with extended lees contact after fermentation to enhance minerally and occasionally smoky complexity. Some, such as Judy Cullam at Frankland Estate, are even gearing up for maturation in very large and relatively neutral oak casks to encourage a very slow and controlled oxidation that many believe is part of the mystery of the freshness of European riesling. Riesling’s has an exciting future in Australia. While their early moves have been so productive, our winemakers are just beginning what may prove to be a long and slow process of refinement. It’s even indeed possible that we have yet to discover where riesling grows best in Australia. Most of our vineyards are on flats, while in Europe it’s largely grown on hillsides. No matter how long it takes, this is one journey worth watching. The new generation of cutting-edge Australian rieslings: Castle Rock Riesling (Great Southern, WA) Delatite VS Riesling (Mansfield, Vic) Frankland Estate Isolation Ridge Riesling (Frankland River, WA) Frankland Estate Poison Hill Riesling (Frankland River, WA) Grosset Polish Hill Riesling (Clare Valley, SA) Jacob’s Creek Steingarten Riesling (Eden Valley, SA) Leo Buring Leonay Eden Valley (Eden Valley, SA) Pikes Riesling (Clare Valley, SA) Pikes Reserve Riesling (Clare Valley, SA) Seppelt Drumborg (Western Victoria, Vic) Tim Adams Riesling (Clare Valley, SA)
