Grosset, `Alea` Clare Valley Riesling

For the last forty years, the Grosset ‘Springvale’ and ‘Polish Hill’ Rieslings have shown a consistent style and quality that have earned Jeffrey Grosset an unrivalled reputation. Through meticulous vineyard management and decades of experience, Jeffrey’s wines keep getting better. In the words of Campbell Mattinson in the Halliday Wine Companion, "Grosset has been a star producer for all the time I’ve been in wine, but right now its wines are as good or better than they’ve ever been"

Jeffrey’s love of Riesling began at 15 when his father came home with a bottle to share with the family. This bottle was enough to inspire a young Jeffrey to enrol in the local agricultural college and complete qualifications in both Agriculture and Oenology by the age of 21. After honing his craft in Australia and Germany, he bought an old milk depot in the Clare Valley town of Auburn in 1981 and has transformed it into one of Australia’s finest wineries.

Certified both organic and biodynamic, the Grosset vineyards are located in the high country of the Clare Valley. Located at between 460 to 560 metres elevation, they are the coolest sites in the region. Jeffrey prizes densely planted sites on poor soils that force the vines to produce low yields of exceptionally concentrated fruit. The ‘hard rock’ blue slate of the eight-hectare Polish Hill site results in wines that are steely and magnificently age-worthy, while the red loam over limestone topsoil and ancient slate bedrock of the five-hectare Springvale vineyard gives more open and accessible, yet no less complex, wines. Such is Jeffrey’s attention to detail that he noted a small strip (22 metres wide by 300 metres long) in his Rockwood vineyard that produced more generously flavoured wines due to the hard red rock soils here. He found the grapes the site produced reminded him of the great European Rieslings and decided to produce a separate wine from it: ‘Alea’.

As the story of ‘Alea’ illustrates, Jeffrey is fanatical about the quality of his vineyards. In the winery, each process is gentle and uncomplicated, no fining agents are used, and sulphur is the only addition. By combining a disciplined approach in the vineyard and a delicate touch in the winery, Grosset consistently achieves the purest expression of variety and place. As is the case with his exceptionally precise Chardonnay and Pinot Noir which reflect the sense of place of the ultra-cool Piccadilly Valley, where Jeffrey has sourced these grapes for the past 30 years.

The ‘Nereus’ blends Shiraz and Nero d’Avola from the Rockwood vineyard. It is elegant and aromatic with notes of bramble and raspberry married with subtle hints of rose petal, silky tannins and a lifted acidity. ‘Gaia’ remains one of Australia’s best Cabernet blends, made with Cabernet Franc and Cabernet Sauvignon from the isolated, windswept ‘Gaia’ vineyard that Jeffrey planted at the highest point of the Clare Valley (560 metres elevation) on hard red rock in 1986. Aged for 18 months in French oak barriques (45% new), it is hugely intense and complex, with vivid blackcurrant and mulberry fruit, a cigar-box spiciness and firm but finely woven tannins. The Grosset name may be synonymous with Riesling, but the Grosset reds deserve equal acclaim.