Hatch Clare Watervale Riesling 2025
- 96
- $35
- Drink by: 2025-2045
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After a long and distinguished career with some of our larger producers, Chris Hatcher has gone out on his own and is creating scintillating wines of precision. This is a superb Clare Valley Riesling from the Watervale sub-region, from the increasingly impressive vintage of 2025. Great value as well. Hatch, as he is known by all, compares the wine to jazz. That seems extremely unfair. I actually really like it. A very pale steely lemon/green hue, this is textbook stuff. Clean and fresh with drive, length and direction, the nose gives us notes of limes, florals, lemon curd and wet pebbles. The focus of an arrow and the balance of a circus performer, this is from the leaner end of the spectrum with a line of bright, zippy acidity. A cracker. It will provide fifteen to twenty years of pleasure.
Ken was born and bred in Brisbane, Queensland. He had a non-trendy, perfectly happy childhood, in a family convinced alcohol meant instant condemnation to Hades. But a break fishing on the Great Barrier Reef, and some good wine, started a serious obsession that eventually took over. It did not stop Ken being chastised later for drinking Pol champagne, disgusted he’d drink anything made by a Cambodian dictator. Now, Ken mostly writes on wine, champagne and spirits for various newspapers, magazines and books, but is perhaps best known for his work in The Courier Mail. He also has a little sideline writing on cigars, fishing, travel and food. When not writing, fly-fishing for trout in NZ or bonefish on the flats of Cuba, travelling or smoking cigars, he is no doubt following a variety of sporting teams – the occasionally glorious Queensland Reds rugby, the dysfunctional Washington Redskins, the dodgy Arsenal and especially revels in the world restored to its proper axis with the return of the Ashes to their rightful home.
