Sometimes it’s strange how things work out.
With two days to work around the Clare Valley Riesling Trail, I’d planned to spend a day working down each side of the Main North Road. Which day was which depended on a reservation for lunch at Skillogalee. My preference was for Thursday, but if they were booked out, Wednesday would have to do. Skillogalee is on the west side of the highway, so whichever day we could get in there for lunch was also going to include visits to a number of wineries. Other considerations regarding catering arrangements would have made for an extremely tight schedule if Wednesday was the only option.
Fortunately, Thursday at Skillogalee wasn’t booked out, so just after ten on Thursday morning we pulled into the car park at Jim Barry Wines. Given the number of stops on the schedule I would have preferred to get there earlier, but I wasn’t the driver. Arriving in the car park, I wasn’t exactly happy to see four people walking in just ahead of us. On most of our stops the previous day we’d had the tasting facility to ourselves, which had resulted in some interesting conversations.
When we walked in, one of the foursome was explaining their next door neighbour was the winery’s Queensland distributor. I’m not sure whether that contributed to the number of wines we tasted in a lengthy and leisurely session, but when we left I’d managed to make much more detailed tasting notes than I’d managed anywhere else.
Starting with the Rieslings the 2008 Watervale ($15) was another in the long run of fantastic wines that are the Valley’s trade mark. Anyone minded to quibble is reminded the track running along the old rail line from Auburn to Clare is the Riesling Trail rather than the Shiraz, Semillon Sauvignon Blanc or anything else Trail.
Slightly upmarket, the 2007 Lodge Hill ($18) showed the benefit of bottle age and was quite wonderful but the first knockout punch of the day came with the 2007 Florita ($40) a stellar wine made from free run juice (about 40% of the available volume) that was 100% Riesling without a trace of skin, stem or stalk. Quite simply, a fantastic wine. After that, the 2008 Silly Mid On Sauvignon Blanc Semillon was always going to pale by comparison.
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