Dandelion Vineyards 2021 "Enchanted Garden of the Eden Valley" Riesling

£11.50
Tasting notes
Classic lemony, minerally Riesling that is bone dry with austere acidity. A great aperitif and goes with almost any white meat dish.

Why we recommend this wine
Eden Valley and neighbouring areas in South Australia produce some of the world’s great dry Rieslings and this is a highly rated example regularly scoring more than 90 points and winning Gold medals. It provides a great comparison to our Alsace Rieslings which are also dry.

The wine
The Enchanted Garden vineyard was planted in 1910 and thrives to this day. The grape bunches are hand-picked and then de-stemmed without crushing the fruit. Juice from the free run and pressings are seperated then fermented in small tanks between 11 and 13 degrees Celcius. The wine has a high level of natural acidity and although bone dry, only 12.0% alcohol. The wine is bottled directly with minimal fining and filtration to capture the essence of the vineyard. It is ready to drink now but will cellar for decades to give increasing complexity on the nose and palate.

The wine estate
Terroir, in a word, is what Dandelion Vineyards is all about. In addition to their own vineyards they source grapes from family-owned vineyards enabling them to make wines from Adelaide Hills, Eden Valley, Langhorne Creek, McLaren Vale, Barossa Valley and Fleurieu Peninsula. They strive to make each wine the purest expression of its terroir that they can. This wine comes from vineyards owned and tended by Sue and Stuart Woodman.
At the 2020 Sommelier Wine Awards Dandelion Vineyards was voted as New World Producer of the Year; the first Australian wine producer to be awarded this prestigious title.
dandelionvineyards.com.au

Food and wine
Light, lemony and minerally means simple cooking (no overbearing sauces) and subtly flavoured, light meats and fish. Also see our guide to pairing food and wine here.

Did you know?
In addition to being used between vines to suppress winter weeds and provide mulch in the summer, the common weed, Dandelion can be eaten, flowers, leaves, roots and all. “While the smaller leaves are considered to be less bitter and more palatable raw, the bigger leaves can be eaten as well, especially as an addition to a green salad. If raw dandelion leaves don't appeal to you, they can also be steamed or added to a stir-fry or soup, which can make them taste less bitter. The flowers are sweet and crunchy, and can be eaten raw, or breaded and fried, or even used to make dandelion wine. The root of the dandelion can be dried and roasted and used as a coffee substitute, or added to any recipe that calls for root vegetables.” Wouldn’t have believed it ourselves if we hadn’t read it on treehugger.com.