Excellent and unpretenious, these Aussie wines offer excellent value
This is a family that has always made wine which was undeniably theirs. The riesling style favours texture and flavour and the firm-structured bush-scented reds are so typical of the Clare.
Hilary Mitchell was clearing out the detritus of decades. The kind of stuff that can build up in a winery that’s been in a family for 50 years. Among the notes on vintages past and the piles of invoices long since paid, she found her father Andrew’s diary from the year of her birth. She turned to June and learned he’d spent most of the day on the 11th getting reds to barrel. The 12th had a car service crossed out and a simple note that his wife Jane was seeing the doctor. More importantly, fellow winemaker Stephen George was coming to rack the red wine pressings. Then at the bottom of the page, a footnote. “9.25pm, Hilary born.”
Andrew Mitchell has never been an effusive man, but he is a deeply thoughtful one. The winery he and Jane started on the family farm in the Clare Valley has just completed its 50th vintage. In that time not a real lot has changed.
The winery is functional rather than flashy, with an old slate fermenter he rescued from the historic Quelltaler winery. The kids who grew up around its tanks and barrel cradles have returned to work at Mitchell Wines, as it was hoped they would: Hilary in the winery alongside Andrew’s long-time offsider Simon Pringle, Angus overseeing the vineyards and Edwina maintaining the Mitchell marketing tradition of simply and humbly allowing the wines to speak for themselves. And what those wines say is worth hearing. They have always been wines that were undeniably theirs. The riesling style is one that favours texture and flavour over stern, acid-driven discipline. The reds are comfortably medium bodied with the firm structure and swirling scent of the bush that has always been typical of Clare.
Andrew Mitchell believes great wines are age-worthy wines and he has always held them back before release. The accountants don’t love it, but the wines do.
MITCHELL CLARE VALLEY WATERVALE RIESLING 2023, $28
A wine that leans into pithiness and texture. A counterpoint to rapiers and razor wires found in wines that over-emphasise acid. Preserved lemon, some Watervale florals, a powdery, talcy dryness, a Salvital tang. A beautifully balanced and graceful wine with a gentle phenolic grip and pithy length. 93 points
SEVENHILL VINEYARD CABERNET SAUVIGNON 2018, $34
Calm and settled, a wine comfy in its cardigan. The nose offers up blackberries and fennel fronds, dry eucalypt and cedar. The first signs of a secondary savouriness just starting to emerge but not at the cost of vitality or fruit freshness. Sinewy and long, with finely sculpted flesh and fine, fully resolved dusty tannins. 94 points
McNICOL SHIRAZ 2010, $70
Ripe plums and shavings of dark chocolate, some dried sage and the umami rich scrapings from a roasting pan. A fine seam of dry eucalypt and dark earth, a bit of “bush garrigue”. A 14-year-old current release of this quality at this price says more about Andrew Mitchell than he’ll ever say about himself.
95 points