‘The wines have been exceptional from the get-go, but the 2024s are, to my mind, the best yet’
They are starkly different and equally magnificent. This is well and truly on the pulse of great Clare riesling.
RingNeil Pike to tell him how much you enjoyed his rieslings from 2024 and you get this in response: “I’d f..king well hope so, I’ve been doing it long enough.” It’s a response borne from self-deprecation, not snark; Pike is so perpetually jovial he makes shopping centre Santas look surly. And he’s right, too: he’s been making great Clare Valley riesling longer than Australians have watched colour television, first with Jane and Andrew Mitchell and then 35 vintages alongside his viticulturist brother Andrew under their eponymous label Pikes. The titular fish adorning that label has become a familiar, and welcome, sight for wine-lovers.
When Neil decided to step away from Pikes after the 2019 vintage he slid into a retirement of sorts, tending his vegie garden, diving into the deeper recesses of his cellar and acting as a roadie for his chanteuse wife AJ. But winemakers like him never really retire. With an acre of mature riesling vines around his house in the Polish Hill region, and access to another well-established vineyard in Watervale, Pike just couldn’t help himself. “Nothing too serious, just a couple of thousand bottles,” he says. “Just to keep my hand in.”
That hand, and its innate feel for making riesling, earned him the nickname (bestowed by curmudgeonly wine writer Gary Walsh) that became his brand: Limefinger. Because everything he touches turns to citrus-scented riesling gold. The wines have been exceptional from the get-go, but the 2024s are, to my mind, the best yet. The richer terra rossa soils of Watervale deliver delicate, rounder wines of lifted floral aromatics, abundant citrus and talcy textures, while the denuded loams over ancient slate at Polish Hill produce taut, linear wines with intense citrus characters and uncompromising acidity.
They are starkly different and equally magnificent. This Limefinger is well and truly on the pulse of great Clare riesling.
LIMEFINGER ‘LEARNINGS’ WATERVALE RIESLING, 2024
$42
A lifted and fragrant nose of candied lime peel, chamomile and grandma’s bath salts. There’s fine, almost brittle, delicacy to this wine. A soft, confit citrus fullness at the front of the palate, then the wine compresses, tightens and tapers as it drives through a long, talcy finish of serious sustain. 12% alcohol, 96 points
LIMEFINGER ‘SOLACE’ POLISH HILL RIESLING, 2024
$42
Crushed rock and fresh lime juice, some coriander seed and cheese cloth. The faintest suggestion of citrus blossom and jasmine. It’s more densely packed than the Watervale; every crevice is filled in, coiled tight. Upright and linear. Assured presence, unwavering clarity and focus. A lingering pithy dryness. Stash it in the cellar. It may outlive all of us. 11% alcohol, 97 points