Frankland Estate SmithCullam Riesling 2023
- 95
- $80
- Drink by: 2024-2036
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If Isolation Ridge is a melt-in-your-mouth kind of Riesling, Smith Cullam is all racy, ceaseless energy in the glass. It offers quite the contrast, even though the fruit is also sourced from the Isolation Ridge vineyard. Speaks with an airy, floral aroma intensity, citrus and talc. Hunter Smith’s winemaking breaks the usual Aussie Riesling mould in its use of whole bunches and fermentation (40%) in seasoned 500L oak as well as in stainless steel, followed by nine months on lees. Delicate, lemony and spicy with a barley sugar-like sweet tingle on the middle palate. Texture is building and a distinctive flintiness combined with vibrant acidity completes one impressive Riesling. And, it might be added, it’s very much a young wine in building mode.
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.
