Pewsey Vale 10 Year Museum Reserve The Contours Riesling

Pewsey Vale Contours Riesling Museum Release bottle image

Wine Description

Pewsey Vale Vineyard The Contours is characterised by a special site, sensitive vine growing and astute winemaking. The Contours Riesling is produced from old vines grown on the coolest slope within this ruggedly beautiful single vineyard. After 10 years in the bottle the 2007 Pewsey Vale Contours Riesling is showing all the poise and intensity that you would expect in a great bottle aged Riesling.

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Acclaim
“A beautiful mature Australian dry riesling, which shows the lime-marmalade and toast character we associate with these wines. However, there are also notes of green peppercorns, dill and chamomile. Long finish that’s at once crisp and quite mellow (due to the bottle maturation). Still many years of life ahead of it.”
— James Suckling, Oct 2022
“This contour-planted (1965) block of riesling, high in the Eden Valley has been the source of many a riesling epiphany. Pale to mid straw in the glass, with aromas of Bickford's lime, grapefruit pith, lemon zest. There's a complex array of underlying characters: preserved lemon, kaffir lime, beeswax, dried honey, lemon curd, crushed quartz, sage, soft spice, pressed flowers and almond paste. Toasty, long of finish and still boasting plenty of zesty drive, detail and clarity, it's just wonderful drinking.”– Gold
— James Halliday, Aug 2022
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Vineyard & Production Info
Vineyard name
Pewsey Vale Vineyard
Soil composition
grey sandy loam
Elevation:
1,500 feet
Average Vine Age:
42
Certifying Organizations:
ISO14001; Entwine Australia
Sustainability Certification:
EPA Acredited Sustainability Licence
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Winemaking & Aging
Prefermentation Technique:
1-4 days on solids before wild yeast start to ferment
Varietal composition:
100% Riesling
Fermentation container:
Stainless steel tanks
Malolactic fermentation:
no
Fining agent:
Vegan
Type of aging container:
bottle
Length of bottle aging:
10 years
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Analytical Data
pH level:
3.07
Acidity:
6.21 g/L
Alcohol:
12.5 %
Residual sugar:
2 g/L
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Wine Production

Sealing a bottle under a screw cap removes the variability and taints associated with cork. A screw cap also ensures that the wine in the bottle will age under the best possible conditions. The perfect seal of the screw cap ensures that no air or oxygen can enter the bottle. In these reductive conditions the wine undergoes "pure bottle aging" where the fresh citrus flavors remain, and are overlaid with flavors of toast, lemon grass and eventually some honey and possibly marmalade. Since there is no oxygen getting in to the bottle, there is no oxidising or "drying out" of the wine. This means that the colour, while it will deepen into the gold spectrum, retains its freshness and green hues and does not go brown, and that the flavors and palate do not "dry out",but stay fresh with any sweet fruit characters that were initially in the wine remaining.

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About the Vineyard

Rainfall in Eden Valley during the growing season was less than forty percent of average, this combined with low crop set and slightly higher than average temperatures, caused the grapes to ripen nearly a month earlier than normal. Despite these trials, the quality of the fruit was excellent, and the resultant wines full of limes and citrus flavours with lovely long mineral acidity.