Vickery Eden Valley Riesling 2022

"John Vickery is in the same league as Max Schubert and other great winemakers, most of whom are known for their reds."  Jeffrey Grosset 

John Vickery is the acknowledged old master of Riesling in Australia, with an illustrious career spanning nearly sixty years. In that time he has amassed an extraordinary awards tally of more than fifty Trophies and over four hundred Gold Medals.

"A rapier-like release from riesling master John Vickery that celebrates all that is great about the Eden Valley. It's a picture of purity, precision and velocity with tight, limey fruit cut with high tones of Christmas lily, crushed quartz, orange blossom and river stone. Tight, vivid acidity has the wine riding on rails and setting a brisk cadence with uber-pure lime fruits powering through to the finish. It's quite lovely."  Dave Brookes

"Fruit was sourced from the Stephens' Wyncroft Vineyard (1971 plantings), the Zander' Quarry Block (1977 plantings) and the Mason' Woodcarvers Vineyard (2001 plantings). Green with hints of light straw yellow. A powerful nose with lifted notes of bath salts, florals, bright blossoms and lemon. The palate is pure and bright. Juicy grapefruit, lemon curd and spices. Mouth filling with lovely fresh and balanced acidity. A Riesling with beautiful purity and prettiness in youth that promises to be a wonderful wine to age –10+ years."  Vickery Wines

Expert reviews

"A rapier-like release from riesling master John Vickery that celebrates all that is great about the Eden Valley. It's a picture of purity, precision and velocity with tight, limey fruit cut with high tones of Christmas lily, crushed quartz, orange blossom and river stone. Tight, vivid acidity has the wine riding on rails and setting a brisk cadence with uber-pure lime fruits powering through to the finish. It's quite lovely. Drink by 2030."  Dave Brookes, Halliday Wine Companion - 95 points  and Special Value Wine  ★ 

"Like its Watervale cousin, the 2022 Vickery Eden Valley Riesling is a beautiful wine from a great vintage. Fragrant, lime aromas are followed by a precise, balanced, elegant and long palate, the delicious lime and lemon flavours centre stage. The fine acidity is long and lingering. Delicious."  Nick Munday, Canterbury Wines - 95 points and Special Value Wine  ★ 

"Pale green gold. Beautifully perfumed wine with classic lime, lemon, green apply, slatey aromas with hint of verbena, quince and jasmine. Lovely fruit sweetness, pure lemon, lime, green apple flavours carried by coiled acidity and appealing creamy texture. Elegant, ethereal with a promising future."  Andrew Caillard MW, The Vintage Journal - 95 points

"Open a bottle, pour a glass and stand back. Prepare yourself for the aromatic scent that can hit you like a hammer. This vintage is chock full of everything we love about Eden Valley Riesling in spades. My notes started to look like a shopping list: talc, white flowers, bath salts, white pepper, Thai basil, green apple, green papaya and, finally, dusty lemon. I added preserved lemon and ginger to the list when I finally tore myself away from the perfume and tasted the wine. You might say it’s a complex, yes. Acidity is keen, a might sharper or at least more pronounced than its sister Riesling from Watervale and it’s sustained from go to whoa with good depth of concentration. Another ’22 riesling for the cellar – I suspect that cellar is about to get pretty crowded. Drink: 2022-2032."  Jeni Port, Wine Pilot – 95 points

"Expressing precision and awesome clarity, the wine shows Granny Smith apple, lime sorbet and wet limestone notes on the nose, leading to a concentrated palate displaying outstanding tension and persistency. Gracefully slim and super long on the finish with mouth-watering flavours. At its best: 2025 to 2038."  Sam Kim, Wine Orbit – 95 points

"This 2022 Eden Valley Riesling is exceptional: briny and taut, and the nose is layered with crushed rocks (quartz, white things), spring flowers, lemon zest and preserved citrus. In the mouth, the wine carries the austere salty character and expresses its tightly coiled, springy fruit profile as it unfurls through the long finish. It's a very smart, tense wine."  Erin Larkin, Wine Advocate - 94 points

Awards

Special Value Wine – Halliday Wine Companion  ★ 
Special Value Wine – Canterbury  ★ 

John Vickery

John Vickery is the acknowledged old master of Riesling in Australia, with an illustrious career spanning nearly sixty years, culminating in the extraordinary awards tally of more than fifty Trophies and over four hundred Gold Medals.

John Vickery has been instrumental in shaping the history of Riesling in Australia. Working his first vintage back in 1951, John Vickery built his illustrious career around strict attention to detail and old-fashioned hard work. His fastidious nature and particular ways are legendary and an integral part of greatness.

His mastery began with Leo Buring in 1955 at Chateau Leonay winery, where the focus was on Eden Valley and Watervale fruit. Without any modern-day processing, equipment winemaking was quite a crude process, which shows true testament to his outstanding ability. Vickery’s hallmark approaches were cool fermentation and careful handling, so it was in the latter years with the introduction of refrigeration and airbag presses, that John was best able to capture the Riesling grape’s fine delicate flavours.

With more than fifty Trophies, over four hundred Gold Medals and a Jimmy Watson for good measure, John Vickery is recognized as an inspiration and benchmark for many young (and old) winemakers. Highlights of his career include winning the 2007 Wolf Blass Riesling Award at the Canberra International Riesling Challenge. He was humbled to be judged by his peers as Australia’s Greatest Living Winemaker in a survey conducted by Epicure in 2003. However, he considers his most rewarding contribution to the Australian Wine Industry is being the first to re-introduce the screw cap with the 1998 Richmond Grove Watervale and Barossa Rieslings. This was by any measure the single most significant event in the improvement in the quality of Australian Riesling. In 2007 John was awarded the Medal of Order of Australia for 'service to the wine industry as an oenologist, particularly through the development of innovative methods for Riesling production.'

About Vickery Wines

Although John Vickery is in his mid-80s and retired for many years, his name endures on the labels of riesling wines produced by the Hesketh family’s WD Wines group. John Vickery, Robert Hesketh and the late Peter Lehmann were all close friends and contemporaries as well as business associates. When Peter's son Philip Lehmann was winemaker for WD Wines, the Vickery brand was created and John Vickery was invited to consult. The first wine released under the Vickery label was the 2014 Watervale Riesling and since then a Clare Valley and Eden Valley Riesling have been made each year.

Today Vickery Wines is John's winemaking experience partnered alongside the talented winemaking team of Keeda Zim and Andrew Hardy. Together they create Rieslings that showcase John's extensive expertise with the variety.

"The wines are made very much in the Vickery style." says Hesketh. "That means absolute flavour. John is massive on flavour. He believes most of the flavour is in the pressings, so some pressings are put back into the wine after the primary free-run fermentation. Light pressings, not heavy. So there’s less austerity in a Vickery wine. John is also a stickler for detail, he’s pedantic about quality and attention to detail."

Vickery in his heyday was also known to be almost fanatical about cleanliness; winery hygiene was scrupulous. Every drip of wine had to be cleaned up pronto. Vickery may have slowed down a bit, but he’s still involved in the process, particularly picking dates and blending.

"John has been involved in every vintage. He loves going into the vineyards and discussing picking times. He’s also involved in the blending with the winemakers, Keeda Zilm and Andrew Hardy. The Vickery wines are more about how John does things, which is inevitably different to the way Andrew or Keeda does things. Both have made a lot of riesling in their time, Hardy at Knappstein, then Petaluma, and Zilm at O’Leary Walker. But, with the Vickery wines, the man himself still calls the shots.

Large sections of the above text were taken from an article by Huon Hooke in the Real Review titled "Vickery the riesling master". 

Sadly, John Vickery,  the father of Riesling in Australia, died on 23rd September 2023 at the age of 90.