Best’s Foudre Ferment Riesling 2022
- 96
- $35
- Drink by: 2023-2031
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If you have never considered the Grampians as a producer of fine Riesling, may I present Exhibit A. Best’s Foudre Ferment was born in the shadows. Former winemaker, Adam Wadewitz, bought an expensive 2500L oak foudre on the quiet. His replacement, Justin Purser, decided to prepare the vat for Chardonnay by running a Riesling through it, and the rest is history, as they say. The resulting Foudre Ferment riesling – with extended skin contact, wild fermentation and oak maturation on lees – offered a stunning interpretation of the grape. With the 2022 vintage, the follow up to the marvellously complex 2021, we see another example of a wine at the top of its game for both the maker and the variety. Two great vintages in a row. Lime juice, preserved lemon, pink grapefruit, Thai basil, rosemary, honeysuckle, ginger – the ’22 is astonishingly complex in aromas and flavours. You have to admire the juxtaposition of the utter brightness of the fruit, tingly and snappy, to the wine’s honeyed smoothness and texture. It is a great flavour sensation, fresh, alive, honeyed and mellow (especially across the middle palate) at the same time, finishing with a rousing fruit tingle brightness. Any way you put it, it’s another brilliant Riesling.
Jeni Port is one of Australia’s top wine communicators. Based in Melbourne, Jeni created the first wine column in the (then) Sun News-Pictorial before moving over to The Age and becoming that paper’s longest-serving wine writer. Over the years she has written for most Australian wine magazines and these days calls WinePilot home. She is also a Tasting Panel member on the Halliday Wine Companion. She was named Wine Communicator of the Year and Legend of the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival in 2014 and in 2018 Legend of the Vine. She is a founding board member of Australian Women In Wine and is the co-deputy chair of Australia’s Wine List of the Year Awards and China’s Wine List of the Year Awards.
