Friday, 18 September 2009
Paulett
If there was a single incident that lit the spark under Hughesy’s enthusiasm for Clare Valley Riesling it was an encounter with around a dozen heavily-discounted bottles of Polish Hill River Riesling from Paulett a couple of years back.
Up to that point I’d sampled enough examples of the style to know I liked it, but walking into the local liquor barn to find a couple of bottles marked down to approximately half of what was already a very reasonable recommended retail price in the high teens meant there was obviously only one thing to do - grab a couple, take them home to try them out and see where we went from there.
Predictably, where we went from there was back to the grog shop to buy up the remaining stock.
In the interim, of course, we’ve actually made our way down to Clare, and duly wended our way around what looked like the pick of the establishments that are open to the public. Didn’t get to all of them, but one of the ones that were always going to be on the must visit list was Paulett.
Predictably, something went wrong in between the visit and the notebook where I was laying down the original version of the Travelogue, and both my scribbled tasting notes and all the publicity material I’d liberated from the winery liberated themselves from Hughesy.
Fair enough, I thought. I liked the place and I’ve got a pretty fair idea what I liked when I was there. There’s a website and a mailing list. No problem.
Finances didn’t allow me to jump in and stock up right away, and over the next few months I found myself deflected by offers from elsewhere as I worked my way through the list of places I had to order from.
In particular I was waiting for an indication through the mail or the internet ether that establishments on the half-a-dozen to go list had released the next batch of wines - presumably the 2009 whites and reds from whatever earlier vintage they happen to be up to for each style.
I’d been scrolling through the bookmarks looking for updates and had progressed to the polnt where I was pondering a case of the 2006 Polish Hill River from (or a mixed dozen? Chance to do the range again, particularly important after those tasting notes went missing) when I took a stroll downtown.
