Drenched in Riesling: A Journey Through Australia's Clare Valley

If you live in America you can be forgiven for thinking Yellow Tail is the quintessential Australian wine. Its range and eight dollar price tag has made it a popular choice for budget-conscious consumers across the country. But, just like its beer counterpart, Fosters, Yellow Tail is rarely, if ever, seen on menus around Australia (I've never actually seen it on one myself), nor is it stocked at every wine store, brought to dinner parties, or spotted on wine racks in the home. Put simply, it's an export wine. And while it may be welcomed by American wine drinkers chasing a cheap but cheerful drop, commercial, cut-rate wines like Yellow Tail and Jacob's Creek have caused the perception of quality Australian wine overseas to take a beating in recent years.

But if you care to seek out Aussie wines that are not mass-produced (which, granted, are often difficult to find in the U.S. these days), you will certainly discover countless winemakers who produce superlative wines. You'll also find familiar varietals created in different styles.  

One of these is riesling. Australia produces delicious dry rieslings, most notably in South Australia's Clare Valley. For a long time I stayed away from riesling, thinking they always came sweet. But just like Alsace in France, Clare Valley is known for making more acid-driven rieslings. 

Image credit: worldnomads.com

Since Peter is a huge fan of the German grape (and the one who encouraged me to taste its refreshing version), we decided to head down to South Australia for a wander through the Clare Valley countryside, one of Australia's oldest wine regions. The first vineyards were planted here in the 1840s. Clare is two hours north of Adelaide, the capital of South Australia. The Barossa Valley, one of Australia's most well-known wine regions, is near by, yet the styles of shiraz and cabernet differ greatly between the two. 

We flew out of Brisbane at 6:20 a.m. and arrived in Adelaide a couple hours later on what turned out to be a perfect autumn day. After hiring a car we were on our way. Classical music serenaded us through the open, panoramic landscape while I watched colourful birds chase each other past eucalyptus trees, gleefully soaring over red dirt. We reached Auburn, the start of the Clare Valley, in an hour and a half. 

The Clare Valley actually encompasses a number of valleys with ranges that run north to south. The valleys offer various soils—from red topsoil and limestone, to broken slate and sandy loams—where riesling grows next to shiraz and cabernet. With a little over 40 wineries, the wine trail here is relatively small. And it's certainly not the most touristy spot, which was a plus for us. We only encountered a couple of out-of-towners during our three day visit. 

Our first stop was Mount Horrocks. The cellar door and cafe is located inside Auburn's old train station, so it comes with a side of history. Winemaker Stephanie Toole only produces about 4500 cases a year from her estate grown, handpicked grapes, which have been met with high acclaim from critics. The standouts for me were the 2011 Riesling, tangy with balanced acidity and grown in Clare's Watervale Valley; and the 2011 Cordon Cut Riesling, a sweet, dessert style wine, with the sweetness coming from its fruit not sugar. 'Cordon cut' is a winemaking technique where the vines are cut and the grapes are left hanging for a few days prior to harvesting. A newspaper clipping hanging on the wall inside told me Mount Horrock's Cordon Cut 2005 vintage was served to Queen Elizabeth II on her 80th birthday. (An endorsement like that has the potential to sway one's opinion—in either direction—about many things, but luckily for me I tried it before reading and truly believe it to be delicious.)

After lunch at Mount Horrocks we made our way to Brice Hill Country Lodge, a four room estate nestled among vineyards between Seven Hill and Clare. Each room is self-contained with a kitchen and massive spa bath. (Having lived in a house with no bathtub the last eight months, I was in heaven!)

Brice Hill Country Lodge

Our view from Brice Hill

View of Brice Hill from the road

It is such a gorgeous setting and will become even more beautiful come winter when everything turns greener. 

Our room came with a complimentary bottle of Knappstein shiraz (meh) and a small decanter of port, which, we discovered later that evening, had unfortunately oxidized. But never mind, the room was lovely and the company, perfect.

After a quick rest we went to Adelina wines, the part of our trip I was most excited about. Adelina is a teeny tiny winery located just a kilometre from Brice Hill. Although the name Adelina has only been around since 2000, its vineyard was planted in 1910. It's small size means no cellar door, which is why I made a point to ring them beforehand to see if we could pop by to have a chat and take a look around.Winemaker Colin McBryde was more than happy to have us.

We were met by Katie, an American from Southern California he'd just hired. She climbed down from the crushing machine to greet us. Seconds later we were shaking Colin's hand as he welcomed us into Adelina's winemaking facility and took us through all things Adelina. His full sleeve tattoos gave away that he wasn't your average winemaker. Drops of bright purple grape juice painted part of his shaved head, which no doubt had something to do with the huge pool of the stuff on the floor. Gregarious and passionate, Colin is the type of person who can talk about wine for hours without ever being at a loss for words. He certainly chose the right profession. He and his wife, Jennie Gardner (whose family owns the winery) have Ph.Ds in oenology. Just the three of them run the operation here, although, since the birth of her daughter, Jennie's involvement has become less and less, which is why Katie came on board. I was amazed to learn the whole winemaking process happened right here, in this little shed, by two people. I'd never been to a winery this small. But it's miniature size means there's a high level of quality control. Plus, it allows Colin's creativity to come out and play.

Adelina only produce around 200 cases of shiraz, 50 to 100 cases of grenache, and an even smaller amount of cabernet sauvignon. Colin's father-in-law, Will Gardner, bought the vineyard in the 1980s, during what he says was a depressed period for the region. At the time, the realtors didn't even advertise the old vineyard because they thought it wasn't a selling point. (Despite the fact the property shared the same soil with one of the oldest and most renowned wineries in the entire region.) So Will bought the property and the vineyard for a song and began cultivating the grapes on its red loam on a base of limestone and slate. Adelina's name is both a nod to Adelaide and the Gardner's desire to incorporate a feminine element into the label and the wines themselves. 

We tasted the 2010 shiraz first, the wine I had read about and the reason we came. Now I don't fancy myself a wine connoisseur (more an enthusiastic novice and consumer) but right away I could taste the difference between shiraz from the Clare and most other regions in Australia. And I liked it. The style is much lighter to medium bodied, and isn't syrupy or reminiscent of raisins, if that makes sense. It's a bright drop, with a nice balance of fruit and acidity and has good structure, which will certainly improve over time. Colin says it would pay to decant it for a day or so if drinking now, but adds he'd be comfortable cellaring it for ten years.

Adelina's vines

We did a vertical tasting of nebbiolo, a northern Italian varietal I have rarely tried. It was interesting to feel as the tannins went from the front of the palette all the way to the back. The eucalyptus trees on the property (see above) left their mark on the wines, with notes of mint and menthol in every sip. I fell in love with nebbiolo. We then tasted two wines from 2011 out of the barrel. Both were shiraz but one was fermented with indigenous (or wild) yeast, the other with inoculated yeast. Peter and I preferred the wild yeast; the wine was softer and more complex. 

One of the non-wine highlights of our visit was when Colin asked what we were doing when we lived in Houston and I told him how I worked as a reporter in public radio. 

"Wait Wait Don't Tell Me is my favourite program!" he said enthusiastically.

"I listen to it every single week," he added.

I, of course, was bubbling over with excitement. In my six years of living in Australia, this was the first person I had ever met who had even heard of it, not to mention was an avid fan. We talked about our favourite panelists, and the 'lightening fill in the blank' round. Colin and his winery scored a million points right then and there.  

We left Adelina and made our way back to Brice Hill. Later that evening, when we were beginning to feel peckish, we discovered the Clare Valley was lacking something pretty important for tourists: restaurants! To be fair, there are a number of places to eat during the day, but come night time, you're basically stuck. There's the Seven Hill pub, Artisan's Table (closed a number of nights though), The Last Word Inn, and maybe a couple more I don't know about. It was a bit of a let down, but we ended up going for pizza at the Last Word Inn. It was easy since it was across the street from our hotel. The view (above) made me forget about the less than superb food; it was too gorgeous an evening to be anything but happy. 

Stay tuned for part two of our journey through Clare Valley!