2023 Dandelion Vineyards 'The Wishing Clock of the Adelaide Hills' Sauvignon Blanc Adelaide Hills

Winemaker Notes: Bright and pale white gold. Brilliant. On the nose, there are bath salts and a mineral stridency, followed by ripe passionfruit, guava, and green bean. On the palate, this is a clean, bright and long, grassy and lemony dry white wine. It has the variety’s power and unmissable identity, but in a way that celebrates the acidity and the fresh and refined fruit; the balance and the long, clean finish. Elena really loves Sauvignon Blanc, but unfortunately it is a variety that is difficult to find great material in South Australia. Much of the clonal material produces too fruity of berries and lacks the savage herbaceous-ness that Sauvignon Blanc wants to show balanced by mouthwatering citrus and a mineral drive. There is a site in Woodside in the Adelaide Hills that Zar helped track down. This vineyard has heritage clone material but relatively young vines and is farmed by Michelle Cox and John Good. Bill & Vicki Borchardt own this little slice of Sauvy heaven atop Teakle’s Hill.

As a young girl in Bulgaria, winemaker Elena Brooks' mother worked in a winery. The demise of the Soviet Republic opened the door to an influx of westerners interested in winemaking in these former states. As one of the few people who could speak English, Elena began translating at the winery after school. By the age of 16, she was making her first batch of Chardonnay. A visiting Australian winemaker encouraged her to study oenology at the University of Adelaide, which she began as a 19-year-old. Today, she runs Dandelion Vineyards with her industry dilettante husband, Zar Brooks. Their ethos is simple: they make single-vineyard wines from the best, old-vine sites from around Barossa, McLaren Vale, and Eden Valley and vinify with a Goldilocks amount of handling. The wines reflect the classic styles from their respective regions, i.e. high acid Riesling from Eden Valley, plush Shiraz from the Barossa, etc. Their prices make them some of the best values out of Australia today.