Grosset Polish Hill Clare Valley Riesling 2025
The nose displays delicate white lily, green apple and lemon blossom notes, while on the palate it is intense, powerful and fine. Pure lime notes tingle on the mid-palate with slate characters adding complexity. Powerful and vibrant acidity persists onto a stunning, lengthy finish.
The eight hectare Polish Hill vineyard (ACO certified organic) was planted in 1996 at an elevation of 460 metres, in the coolest part of the Clare Valley. The low fertility soils of this hard rock site are composed of silt and shallow shales over a thin crust of clay and gravel. The vines have to work harder than those at Springvale, which is located a small distance away, and so produce small, thick-skinned berries with bunches. Relatively close-planted, there are three clones of Riesling producing very few bottle per vine.
The organic grapes were hand harvested before March's hot weather and delivered promptly to the winery in small parcels, where they were crushed and destemmed. The fruit was then gently pressed using a pneumatic press and the free run juice was inoculated with neutral yeasts to preserve the natural expression of the vineyard in the final wine. Fermentation lasted two weeks and took place in temperature-controlled stainless steel tanks in separate batches according to clone and vine age before blending and bottling.
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, founding his eponymous winery in 1981. Since then, this old milk depot has been transformed into one of Australia’s finest wineries.
Grosset vineyards are located in the high country of the Clare Valley. Between 460-560 metres above sea level, they are the coolest sites in the region. 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 of the five-hectare Springvale vineyard gives more open and accessible, though 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 a different soil. As a result, he decided to produce a separate wine from this site, ‘Alea’. Also from the Rockwood vineyard is the ‘G110’ Riesling, made in tiny quantities from a single clone (110). The G110 is a pure expression of variety and site, subtly perfumed with a lingering finish that is tight, ultra-dry and pure.
As the story of ‘Alea’ illustrates, Jeffrey is fanatical about the quality of his vineyards. Hand-tended and certified organic and biodynamic, the Grosset vineyards are farmed sustainably. 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. Indeed, his pure and precise Chardonnay and Pinot Noir reflect the single sites in the ultra-cool Piccadilly Valley, from where Jeffrey has sourced these grapes for the past 25 years.
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