Thursday, May 28, 2009

Another riesling review for the week

It's been an amazing week for us so far. The last of the stock of our Silver Medal winning 2005 Barossa Shiraz was ordered this morning and next week will be heading over to the east coast of Australia. It's a wonderful thing to see orders coming in with the economic climate the way it is and it certainly helps to keep us afloat. There's not many words that inspire us to carry on with making our miniscule amounts of wine than the ones "Sold Out". When we started selling our wines I initially thought that it couldn't be too hard to sell only 350 cases of wine a year but how wrong I was! There's a lot of wine on the market and to get such a small name like ours even noticed by people can be a near impossible task. So to now be able to add the Sold Out stamp to three of our products is truly a wonderful thing.

On another note, here is our second riesling review for the week: http://fullpour.com/2009/05/karra-yerta-eden-valley-riesli.html - from Julian Coldrey's website www.fullpour.com


Karra Yerta Eden Valley Riesling 2005


"Is it possible to know a vineyard after tasting its output only twice? Hardly, or at least not in every respect. But those sites of special interest are so partly because they impart a particular character, hopefully attractive, to the wines made from their fruit. A truism, perhaps, and something of an abstract religion to those who place importance in the idea of a goût de terroir. Yet how striking when you have a real, live example in front of you, as I have this evening.

I tasted the 2008 version of this wine the other day, and enjoyed its accord of soft, elegant fruit and Eden minerality. And what strikes me instantly on smelling this older wine is the same beautiful character of fruit; pastel, watercolour, gauze-like fruit. That's the Karra Yerta vineyard, surely, in my glass now just as it was the other night. Perhaps this seems obvious and trite, but I consider it a marvel on a small scale, something essential and beautiful.

The palate is a slightly more austere, marginally aged, version of the younger wine, which is as it should be. There's a fantastic thrust of acidity that picks up on entry and carries the wine right through its impressive finish. Along the way, tart lime juice, left-of-centre minerality (it reminds of white Burgundy, for some reason) and more of that distinctively elegant fruit, more like a painting of a white peach than the fruit itself. A nice surge of intensity through the middle palate fits within the wine's architecture rather than spilling outside it. There's no great influence of bottle age bar a touch of honey.

A truly excellent Riesling that is about the Eden Valley, the Karra Yerta vineyard and the season in which it was grown. For those with an interest in terroir, I would advise to rush out and buy some -- if it weren't already sold out."

Karra Yerta Wines
Price: $A25
Closure: Stelvin

Posted by Julian on Wednesday, May 27, 2009 at 2:49 AM

Filed in Australia, White

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