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Producer
Ricca Terra -
Region
Riverland
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RRP
$100
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Vintage
2024
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Variety/Varieties
Grenache blanc
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Alc./Vol.
12.2%
Ricca Terra have long been champions of the Riverland region – seen by many in Australia’s wine industry as an area capable only of pumping out huge quantities of watery, flavourless grapes destined for bulk-wine production. Ashley Ratcliffe’s ambition with Ricca Terra has always been to change perceptions of this region by encouraging sustainable viticulture, embracing climate-apt alternative grape varieties, and using whip-smart winemaking to showcase what the region can be capable of when approached differently.
Ashley’s new ‘Una Vita’ range is the pinnacle of this project – two serious statement wines, one an outré red blend and this exceptional white drawn from the Rudi Vineyard that retails at $100 and shows what the region can do when lavished with the kind of attention required to make fine wine elsewhere.
Tasting note
Patience, meet rewards … Serve this too fresh from the fridge and you’ll do both the wine and yourself an avoidable disservice. Dare we suggest you pour, then briefly pause and let temperature and some gentle oxygenation work their magic – because grenache blanc likes time and space to unfurl.
Once unfurled, this wine opens with warm, beeswaxy aromatics mingled with chamomile and a faint petroleum twang. The palate is tinged by boiled lolly confection – think childhood lemon barley – spliced with salty preserved lemon. Texture and breadth come to the fore here, checked by a twang of fine, integrated acidity lending line and length. There’s a lilt of bread and butter on the back end hinting at something savoury – and some ageing promise. A brilliant wine for an occasion, and a definite friend with food – get this open on the table (in a decanter, if you have one) in front of good fare and better company and let it do its thing. Rejoice in the Riverland and go with this wine’s unctuous flow – that’s the spirit.
Themes of this wine
Grenache blanc
As its name suggests, grenache blanc is a colour mutation of grenache – the raspberry-scented red variety from Spain that is more famous in its Southern French guise. As with the dark-skinned original, grenache blanc likely originated in Spain, with the colour mutation probably occurring in the Terra Alta region of Catalunya, not far from Barcelona. While there isn’t much grenache blanc currently in the ground in Australia, it’s a variety that has attracted some attention as a climate-apt variety for warmer regions, particularly in South Australia, given its natural tolerance to both drought and heat. It produces rich, unctuous white wines that, while not overly acidic, can age well if carefully made.
Riverland
Ten years ago, five years ago – less even – South Australia’s Riverland was not a name worn proudly on the front label of a wine bottle. It was in the fine print. Obscured, somewhat irrelevant. For Australia’s largest wine region, this may seem odd, but that anonymity was – and still largely is – part of the picture. While so many of Australia’s regions are about specific attributes, specific characters, the Riverland is the everyman, a hot-climate powerhouse of volume production, a champion of affordability and reliable consistency. But there’s more to the Riverland than that, with new growers and makers working with rather than against the heat to make wine of regional character and high quality.
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