How’s this for a bold statement? ‘Una Vita’ takes Ricca Terra’s dedication to the much-derided Riverland to the next level, with a fine-wine level of viticultural and winemaking detail – and a matching price point. And it delivers… Beeswaxy aromatics mingle with flavours of lemon barley, bread and butter.
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.
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.
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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