From: Eden Valley, Barossa, South Australia
Varietal: Riesling
Winemaker notes. Pale straw in colour with green hues. Intense classic lemon fruit aromas, with a hint of white flowers. Bottle aged characters of toast, clove oil and lemongrass emerge and combine with the still fresh citrus and white flowers of its youth. The palate has great length and depth with concentrated power and fresh, pristine lime juice overlaid with toasted brioche, sage oil and lime marmalade. The wine finishes with soft, refreshing natural acidity. Released in 2020 after 5 years of bottle age, this wine will continue to age gracefully for many years.
Enjoy with duck breast and five spice glaze or tofu pad Thai with fresh lime wedges.
Critical Acclaim
RP 95 Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The fruit for this 2015 The Contours Museum Reserve Riesling was picked from the Contours vineyard in the Eden Valley. The Eden is elevated above the Barossa Valley, at an elevation of over 440 meters. The skeletal, podzolic soils veritably burst forth with rocks—quartz and granite—among the old, towering gums that sway in the wind... there's something incredibly evocative about the Eden Valley. With all of this in mind, at seven years of age today in 2022, this wine is spicy and enveloping but absolutely remains shackled to the rails of acidity and tension that this region is so good at. At no point through the finish does the fruit waver or deviate from the set path, telling us it has plenty of time left to go yet.
JS 94 James Suckling
This has made the turn to a complex wine with intense citrus, lemon-butter and toasty notes in a fresh guise. The palate has a bright, succulent and gently creamy feel with a long line of acidity holding the lemon and toasty flavors long. Drink now.
Higher in elevation and topographically more dramatic than the Barossa Valley floor, Eden Valley abuts it to its south and east. While it is a bit of an extension of Barossa, Eden Valley is topographically different than the pastoral Barossa Valley, and is composed of rocky hills and eucalyptus groves.
Recognizing Eden Valley’s potential with Riesling in the 1960s and 70s, producers started to move their Riesling production from Barossa to these better sites where schist soils on hilltops would produce more steely, tart and age-worthy examples. A most famous site, planted by Colin Gramp, called Steingarten, today produces one of the most outstanding Australian Rieslings. Youthful Eden Valley Rieslings express floral, grapefruit and mineral, while with time in the bottle, they become increasingly toasty and complex.