Inspired by the other post on the 2018 Grosset Polish Hill and my attempt to get more into Riesling and aged wines, I decided to kill two birds with one stone and try an aged Riesling. I found a 2013 Grosset Springvale at a nearby store for a killer price (A$50 - newest vintage is A$42, so effectively A$1 per year of ageing) and shared it at dinner with a friend. We had pork chops with sautéed onions sauce and roasted potatoes. This was probably one of the best food/wine pairings we ever did and were pretty proud about it. We opened the wine just before cooking to check in on it, and giving the richness and sweetness imparted from the age development, we decided to sauté onions, deglaze with some wine, and thicken with flour to add some oomph to the dish and add the extra layer of sweetness. (First idea was to add honey and soy sauce to the pork chops, but we had already salted them so we went for the sauce, and I think it was probably the best route - the two compliment each other perfectly). This wine definitely ages beautifully, and can take up another 5-8 years easily.
2013 Grosset Riesling Springvale Clare Valley- Australia, South Australia, Mount Lofty Ranges, Clare Valley (2/07/2020)
This is in a great place right now. It pours to a beautiful golden yellow; the nose shows age development with heavy petrol at first, while ripe stone fruits, tropical fruits, lemon marmalade, even beeswax and toast appear with more swirling. Generous mouthfeel for a Riesling, hints of honeyed sweetness on the palate, with stone fruits and faint, underlying tropical flavours interplaying nicely. Acidity still very present; finishes long and mouthwatering. Bought for A$50,00 and would definitely recommend.
2013 Riesling is aged Riesling? Not according to my books!
While some Rieslings might develop faster, a good Riesling should start to show some age only after 10-15 years or even longer. Many Clare Rieslings I’ve had have seemed wines for the long run, so a 2013 that feels that developed sounds rather odd to me.
For example I had a basic Jim Barry Watervale Riesling 2013 a year ago, and it was still a mere baby, showing very little development after 6½ years.
I’m not that experienced so I might have overstated the development in my notes. I guess I will hunt down some older ones to really calibrate my palate.
If you have such wines available, I heartily recommend you do so. For many Rieslings around the world 7 years is really nothing. And that includes many fine Australian Rieslings as well.
For example Pewsey Vale’s Contours Riesling Museum Reserve is normally released at 6 years of age and even that one tends to be very youthful upon release, often calling for many years of additional cellaring if one wants to enjoy aged Riesling qualities.
As we don’t have much better-end Aussie wines around here where I’m from, my experience on Australian Rieslings is somewhat limited, but from what I’ve tasted, they seem to take lots of age before starting to dive into that wonderful tertiary territory. Of course that certainly can depend on the wine, vintage and cellaring conditions.
In Australia older Rieslings are often offered on online auctions or even at stores through cellar release programs. At the moment for example they have 2013 Pikes Traditionale and 2008 Jim Barry Florita (and 2013 Tahbilk Marsanne which I plan to snatch next).
Grosset Springvale and Polish Hill with 10+ years age are a common sight at auctions, so I’ll keep my eyes open. For this one, though, I think cellaring conditions are to blame for the advanced development. I bought it from a store after I had seen it offered on their online website. When I arrived at the store I asked for the bottle and they couldn’t find it. It ended up being stuck behind a bottle of the recent vintage (2018). They said they were re-organising the store and older bottles are usually stored in their cooler storage room. How long that bottle has been lying around I cannot say, but it was delicious and didn’t show any signs of off-tones so I won’t complain.
It sounds very possible that it was then in a state of advanced developement, so apparently no big harm done. Perhaps it’s for the best the wine was drunk now and not, say, 10 years from now, because it’s possible that with such provenance the wine might be flat and dead by then.
I’m not comparing apples to apples since I tasted the 2019 Polish Hill and this is the 2013 Springvale. Generally speaking, the former is considered the more austere and mineral of the two (lemon/lime on crushed rocks), whereas the latter is the more generous with more pronounced fruit (lemon/lime on stone fruits). When I use ‘sweetness’ in the note I don’t refer to sugar, since it is bone-dry, but rather the fruit richness/sweetness and age development which gives it more roundness. The natural sweetness of a peach, for example.
In short, yes, it is probably somewhat sweeter, but not due to any sugar content rather the site and the flavour profile that derives from it (and add to it 7 years of development, a newer vintage I might not have described as having ‘sweetness’, hope that makes sense).
