What a season spring is! The verdant land and waking flowers, the lengthening days and the soothing balm of sunlight on the skin. You just want to drink it in.
Apt then, that we have an especially juicy edition of the CellarHand newsletter coming to you this month. The key domestic release is the brand-new suite of Nocturne sub-regional wines from Margaret River power couple Julian and Alana Langworthy, while Tim Shand of Punt Road has a whole set of Airlie Bank releases with the dial set firmly to spring refreshment. In fact, how’s this for the opening line to a review? “I love a wine that’s made for drinking pleasure first and foremost, and these Airlie Bank wines have that goal set firmly in their sights, or more specifically, perky-faced winemaker Tim Shand does.” Yep, you’ll want to catch up on those. Also, dead fresh are the new Riesling releases from Tom and Sam Barry of clos Clare – that’s the baby ’19 and the mature ’14 from one of Watervale’s most celebrated vineyards. Elsewhere here in Australia, Stephen Pannell is picking up more silverware, this time for his Nero d’Avola, and wine writer Huon Hooke is waxing lyrical about his experiences with the new Jancis Robinson range of glassware.
And so to Europe, where we have a delightful range of 2017s from Meursault sister act Elsa and Adèle Matrot. Again from France, Champagne Jacquesson’s 741 is having praise heaped on it, Frédéric Mabileau’s new Chenin Blanc is looking the goods, and we have a new rendition of Riesling and Pinot Blanc from Kientzheim’s Paul Blanck. Quintessential quaffers are the go in achtzehn, Germanically speaking, where we kick off with a range of estate Riesling from all over Deutschland and estate Grüner Veltliner from all over neighbouring Austria. We also have a focus on two producers in that chunk of Europe making the headlines: Koehler-Ruprecht of the Pfalz and Moric of Burgenland.
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