While gewürztraminer is naturally high in sugar, the prevailing new world style produces highly aromatic and complex wines with natural fruitiness kept in check with alcohol and acidity. Dry and persistent, gewürztraminers best food pairings happen when you step outside of traditional French cuisine and experience other foods of the world. Asian dishes that incorporate citrus and spice are ideal pairings, such as calamari and green mango salad with chilli. The wine has a pale straw colour with a green hue. The wine has a pungent lifted aroma that springs from the glass. Turkish delight, musk and mandarin juice characters leap from the glass. The palate is much more restrained, showing more subtle versions of the aromas. The wine is dry and has a good clean acid line. The wine has significant persistence.

When making the 2013 Sidewood Pinot Gris, winemaker Tash Mooney carefully selects the best parcels of fruit from the vineyard that are hand-picked once the Pinot Gris has reached optimum Baume. It then begins its journey through the winery from being whole bunch pressed through to the fermentation process, ensuring at all times that the wines are at optimum temperatures to ascertain the quality of the wine. The 2013 Pinot Gris is pale straw with copper-pink hues, this wine displays vibrant aromas of guava and passionfruit on the nose. This leads to an intense flavour of nashi pear and tropical fruits on the palate with great structure from the crisp and well balanced acid. With its full structure, superb minerality and generous full mid palate it finishes with outstanding length and balance. A great accompaniment to freshly seared scallops, aromatic Thai spiced dishes or enjoy with a grilled vegetable cous cous as a vegetarian option.

The colour is vibrant pale yellow with hues of gold. The aroma is like spring in the Adelaide Hills. A veritable ripening of stone fruit, especially white peaches and nectarine in the market gardens, butter melon, rock melon and cooking leeks in butter. The French oak smells are a terrific frame for the stone fruit. Overall it has a 3 dimensional quality to the aromas, ripening stone fruit and some creamy & succulent French oak.

Lifted tropical fruit aromas highlighted by gooseberry and passionfruit. Textured fruits, nicely balanced with zippy acidity, long clean palate.

RIPOSTE BY TIM KNAPPSTEIN The Katana Chardonnay, Adelaide Hills

The 2013 Kanta Riesling is a youthful green gold in the glass. The nose entices with notes of lemon curd, buttery pastry, honeysuckle and kaffir lime leaf, backed by lovely tertiary notes of brown lime cordial and a hint of kerosene. The palate is yielding and fleshy, but remarkably fresh for 8 years old. At first the palate yields pineapple and baked lemon pudding, well supported by gentle acidity. The time on lees and maturation in bottle means that this is a wine that has truly settled into its own skin. Kanta Riesling by Egon Müller is a unique winemaking partnership where German tradition and precision meets the premium, cool climate fruit from the Adelaide Hills. Kanta partners, Egon Müller and Michael Andrewartha are pleased to announce the ninth release from this unique, cross-cultural winemaking project. Since its inception in 2005 they have proudly watched Kanta come of age.

Red cherries and strawberries along with notes of undergrowth and preserved lemon. Bright and juicy red fruit characters with a savoury back half of earth, leather and subtle dried herbs. The palate is of medium weight with graceful, fine tannins that lend it a plush quality throughout. Grapes were handpicked, keeping individual clones separate in small open fermenters. Some whole bunch fruit was added to ferments, enhancing aromatics and structural complexity. Fermentation was initiated by indigenous yeast (wild ferment). Each clonal parcel was basket pressed and filled to seasoned French oak barrels with full solids. All barrels were kept on lees to build palate, body and complexity. They were racked and blended just prior to bottling. Stephen Georges three hectare, dry-grown, Ashton Hills vineyard lies in the Piccadilly Valley sub region of the Adelaide Hills on a ridge just below the summit of Mount Lofty. Planted in 1982, its a quality site that, thanks to the humility and integrity of its gifted farmer, has been the source of some of South Australias most intriguing cool-climate wines, and certainly its most authentic and fascinating Pinot Noir. You dont need to spend much time in the Piccadilly Valley to realise why this area was granted sub-regional statusit is totally different to the rest of the Hills. In short, its much colder and wetter. Georges Estate vineyard lies at 570 metres above sea level and the vines shudder through some of the coolest vintage conditions in the country. Meanwhile, rainfall is a whopping 1200mm a year, well over double that of the Barossa. Whether its the lifted perfumes, elegant structure and Alpine freshness of the Pinot Noirs or the icy purity of the Riesling, Piccadilly Valleys bona-fide cool-climate imprint is never far away. A healthy portion of old-vines and the vineyards south-facing aspect afford George the luxury of late harvesting that plays a significant role in the personality of these wines. Terroir is one thing, how its worked is another, and Stephen George clearly has an intuitive touch and the drive to continually evolve. Most recently this evolution has resulted in George grubbing out all varieties except for Pinot Noir, and a little bit of Riesling, focusing his Pinot Noir on four specific clones selected from a line-up of 25 that he had tested. The Ashton Hills winery is incredibly basic, with an earth floor and next to no equipment whatsoever. The Pinot fruit is destemmed via a small, customised, gentle destemmer that keeps as many whole berries as possible. The fruit is then basket pressed, and the wine is made without any sulphur additions until bottling. Some whole bunches are included, and the percentage varies according to the style of the vintage. The red wines are mostly raised in aged, neutral French hogshead barrels. Having already cemented his living-legend status amongst his peers and compiled a storied CV that includes his role at Wendouree (since the 1980s) and twenty five vintages at the helm of Ashton Hills, you could forgive this reclusive winemaker for taking his foot off the gas. Not a bit of it. Stephen George is in fact making the best wines of his career.

This Kuitpo Pinot Noir is a blend from two vineyards in Kuitpo, Christmas Hill and Topnote. The blocks integrate seamlessly to produce a wine portraying the gradually shortening days, the subtle look of Autumn and the gently rolling sandy loam landscape draped in morning fog in which it's grow. Partial carbonic maceration adds a floral lift to the wine with subtle earthiness and fresh strawberry notes while a portion of whole bunch gives structure and spice while maintaining the vibrancy and varietal character of Pinot Noir.