This issue’s Wine of the Edition is a cracker of a riesling, grown and made at the Ritchie family’s Delatite vineyard and winery in the Victorian highlands. The reason it’s presented here without its label is a simple one: it doesn’t have one yet. Or a name, for that matter! It should come as no surprise to the riesling enthusiast to learn that I rate Delatite as one of the most important Australian vineyards for this variety. Delatite’s track record as a maker of this grape goes right back to the early 1980s, with a series of fine, elegant and floral wines made from the first vine plantings by Robert Ritchie on his family’s especially cool property southeast of Manfield. Although the first crops of Delatite fruit were sold to Brown Brothers, the company’s first riesling vintages introduced Rosalind Ritchie as a thoroughly competent and capable winemaker in 1982. She created a string of fine, elegant rieslings and gewurztraminers able to cellar for many years, including a leaner blend of riesling and sylvaner from the cooler season of 1984 which has since become remarkably interesting and complex. Robert Ritchie’s first riesling plantings were towards the top and bottom of the steep ironstone hills where Delatite’s first vineyard was established. Towards the end of the extremely dry 1999 season Rosalind noticed that its fruit was substantially different from that grown on younger vines over the rest of the property. The vines had no water from March onwards, were rather stressed and were losing leaves and their fruit didn’t achieve their usual sugar levels. Flavours and acids were another story, for instead of the typically floral expression of Delatite riesling was a distinctively different, more intense and more clearly citrus-lime profile. ‘The young wine had higher acidity and better structure than we usually find, so there was less fiddling around in the winery. We wanted to preserve the wine’s natural austerity and accentuate its difference from the typical Delatite style’, says Rosalind Ritchie. This as yet un-named classic from Delatite has a complex, musky perfume of lime/floral riesling and an underlying mineral scent. It’s long and austere yet delivers a fleshy concentration of bright citrus fruit before a lingering savoury finish of wet slate and tangy acidity. It’s simply brilliant, easily worth its 18.7 points and could be left with confidence until 2007-2011 or even further. Due for release around May, the total run of just 500 cases will sell for about $25, a genuine bargain. To order, simply ring the winery on 03 5775 2922. And I’m certain the Ritchies would willingly part with a bottle to anyone who thinks of what it might ultimately be called! Future releases of this presently anonymous riesling will only be made from seasons which deliver fruit of comparable quality. It’s too early to rule out a 2000 edition, but at this stage such a wine appears unlikely.
