Vickery Eden Valley Riesling 2024

"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 amassed an extraordinary awards tally of more than fifty Trophies and over four hundred Gold Medals. John came out of retirement to consult when the Vickery brand was established in 2014. Current winemaker Keeda Zim, who joined Vickery in 2019, continues to showcase John's extensive expertise with the variety and maintain the brand's enviable track record.

"Intensity of flavour here is excellent. Lime, bath salts and talc with a distinct minerally edge, the finish then carrying that extra spark of rock-on-rock. This is juicy. This is long-flavoured. This will develop slowly and well."  Campbell Mattinson

"Fruit was sourced from the Schubert's 1961 plantings at Barty's Block Vineyard and Mason's 2001 plantings at Woodcarvers Vineyard. The wine is a vibrant pale yellow with green hues. Aromas of white florals, citrus and green apple on the nose, leading into a palate of juicy minerality, subtle grapefruit, mandarin and citrus notes. Promises to be a wonderful wine to age - 10+ years."  Vickery Wines

Expert reviews

"Vickery has produced another beautiful wine from the Eden Valley in 2024, maintaining the wine's enviable track record. Lovely juicy palate with real vitality, full of all things citrus. A core of steely acid drives the long finish. Great drinking."  Nick Munday, Canterbury Wines - 95 points and Special Value Wine  ★ 

"Intensity of flavour here is excellent. Lime, bath salts and talc with a distinct minerally edge, the finish then carrying that extra spark of rock-on-rock. This is juicy. This is long-flavoured. This will develop slowly and well. Drink: 2025-2035+."  Campbell Mattinson, The Wine Front - 94 points

"For me, it was impossible to split this and its Clare Valley sibling, both from 2024. Two superb Rieslings and both great buying. The fruit for this wine was sourced from the Mason and Schubert family vineyards. Winemaking follows the common thread laid down by the legendary Riesling maker, John Vickery (who was also one of the nicest people in the Aussie wine industry and is sorely missed). Pale lemon in colour, with green flecks, the nose is an intriguing mix of river stones, florals, grapefruit and wet slate with an added hint of beeswax. There is good intensity here, drive, balance and focus, along with citrusy acidity and length. Love it and it will drink beautifully for twelve to twenty years. Drink: 2025-2045."  Ken Gargett, Wine Pilot – 94 points

"Aromas of lemon sherbet, grapefruit, apple blossoms and slate. The palate is tightly wound, with a light body and a tense mouthfeel. There’s lovely depth of flavor and density that will evolve nicely with time in the bottle. Drink or hold. Screw cap."  James Suckling, JamesSuckling.com - 93 points

Awards

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.