Pewsey Vale The Contours Riesling

Sealing a bottle under a screw cap removes the variability and taints associated with cork. A screw cap also ensures that the wine in the bottle will age under the best possible conditions. The perfect seal of the screw cap ensures that no air or oxygen can enter the bottle. In these reductive conditions the wine undergoes "pure bottle ageing" where the fresh citrus flavours remain, and are overlaid with flavours of toast, lemon grass and eventually some honey and possibly marmalade. Since there is no oxygen getting in to the bottle, there is no oxidising or "drying out" of the wine. This means that the colour, while it will deepen into the gold spectrum, retains its freshness and green hues and does not go brown, and that the flavours and palate do not "dry out", but stay fresh with any sweet fruit characters that were initially in the wine remaining. A hint of toast overlies the still intense lime and citrus fruit. Citrus dominant, lime juice and marmalade and finishing with a crushed stone minerality. The wine is only just showing the first signs of bottle age after five years, indicating there is still a long future in front of it. Clean and dry with refreshing natural acidity.

2003 | 2002 | 2001 | 2000 | 1999 | 1998 | 1997 | 1996

2004

Eden Valley

Louisa Rose

6 April 2004