Now this really is a surprise. Despite all the publicity and hype surrounding the Yattarna and its almost infinite number of spin-offs, I’ve yet to find a white wine under a Penfolds label for which I would actually part with my own hard-earned. Well, until now. For in a recent tasting of some very fine South Australian riesling one wine in particular stood out, and it had a Penfolds badge. When you consider that Penfolds’ owner, Southcorp, has in its stable other brands like Lindemans, Leo Buring, Coldstream Hills, Devil’s Lair and Seppelt, it’s something of a mystery to me why the Penfolds whites themselves have taken so long to approach their current levels of quality. So when I tasted the new Penfolds Eden Valley Reserve Riesling 1999 I wasn’t exactly expecting the depth of perfume and musky aromatics it simply pumps into the atmosphere. Nor was I expecting its superb length of concentrated essential riesling fruit and tingling acidity. Sure, it’s marginally sweet, but as far as I am concerned, a perfectly valid expression of riesling. It’s bursting with citrus rind and deciduous fruit aromas and its fleshy, juicy mouthfeel has something Alsatian about it that I rather enjoy. Given that the Yattarna project only commenced in 1992 and that it only took Penfolds three years to have made the first wine to be sold under this label, I do think it’s possible to overstate its significance, especially as many smaller wineries have spent a great deal more time than that developing their own premium lines. But it’s still fair enough that Penfolds chief winemaker John Duval acknowledges the role of the Yattarna project in improving the entire approach taken by Penfolds towards the entire spectrum of white wines in its folio, since they’re certainly better than ever before. According to Duval, one of the Yattarna spin-offs was that Penfolds became more aware of the potential of vineyards it wasn’t really fully exploiting. This wine certainly falls into this category and represents a leap of several quanta from the rather coarse Penfolds rieslings of yesteryear which still lurk somewhere in my memory. Neville Falkenberg, who for years has made the Tollana Eden Valley Rieslings, naturally has a soft spot for this combination of region and variety. ‘The Eden Valley is higher and cooler and I feel that the region’s best rieslings are just a little more complex than those from Clare’, he says. ‘They both have fragrance, but there is a steely, chalky character to Eden Valley riesling that adds another dimension of flavour and mouthfeel.’ Unlike the steelier rieslings bottled under the Leo Buring and Lindemans labels, this isn’t a super long-term wine, although Neville Falkenberg believes it will age for many years. Instead, I feel it is a perfect option for drinking now or after another five years. It retails around $25 and I rate it at 18.5.
