Atlas Watervale Riesling Note the proper brown bottle

Atlas Watervale Riesling 2011 (Clare Valley, SA)
12.5%, Screwcap, $25
Source: Sample
www.atlaswines.com.au

Riesling belongs in brown glass. Or dark green at the least. Sure, brown bottles will always be seen by marketers as deeply uncool, but to me they just say ‘this is the correct glass for my easily light affected white wine’. What would those marketers know anyway…

Now, this is sourced from a single vineyard in Watervale and is hand tended, hand picked and hand loved. You can taste it in this wine too. If nothing else Atlas winemaker Adam Barton has access to great fruit.

This is smart wine too. It’s still indelibly marked with the sullen edge of 2011 yet it still smells ripe and varietal and real, with nose showing plenty of Watervale lime peaking out from underneath that shroud of acidity. Actually, speaking of acidity, this has some of the best natural acidity that I’ve seen in an ’11 Clare Riesling, as it tastes is soft, real and utterly natural and ripe whilst still being present and strong and accountable. It’s long too, long and limey and genuine. Good fruit indeed.

Perhaps the best 2011 Clare Riesling I’ve had (so far), I genuinely enjoyed drinking this. 18/93