Grosset Wines is an independently owned winery in the Clare Valley that produces six highly wines each vintage. Grosset was established in 1981 by Jeffrey Grosset in the township of Auburn, Clare Valley 100 kilometres north of Adelaide. The winery is stylish but functional and reflects the attention to detail that extends to the Grosset estate-owned vineyards and winemaking.
Jeff Grosset is one of the luminaries of the Australian wine industry, the result of consistent and stellar quality over the past 26 years. His first vintage was in 1981, after which he has almost single-handedly been responsible for the renaissance of Clare Riesling. His Polish Hill Riesling, one of the world’s great examples of this variety, stands out as Australia’s finest Riesling.
Grosset is a fanatic in the vineyard and the winery. He hand picks and is meticulous not only in his selection but also in the way he treats the grapes once they arrive at the winery. “Making Riesling is the purest form of winemaking,” he says. No oak, no malo, no lees contact – it is all down to the fruit and the way it is treated and interpreted by the winemaker. This is nowhere more evident than in a comparison of Grosset’s Watervale and Polish Hill Rieslings. The former is classic Clare – elegant and restrained, and a beautiful foil to Mount Horrocks’ Watervale – while the latter is more powerful and intense. This difference is solely attributable to the ‘terroir’.
The Polish Hill vineyard is situated at an altitude of 460m above sea level on a low vigour, shale site. The berries are smaller and more concentrated than those from Watervale, and the harvest usually takes place in early April, a few weeks later than Watervale.