Tahbilk 2006 Riesling

When I set out to compare and contrast the Gold Medal and Trophy winning Tahbilk 2010 Everyday Drinking Riesling, by grabbing a Special Offer Riesling Vertical 6 Pack back in February I wasn't expecting to find the six pack still there on offer at the end of August, but there it is, large as life and cheap as chips at the bottom of the Web Specials page on the Tahbilk website.

Not, I suspect, for very much longer.

On the morning walk one day last week I was discussing impending wine purchases with Jimbo, and was considering a box of Riesling from Kilikanoon, an exercise that would have set me back around $270 for a mix of Mort's Block and Mort's Reserve (nine of one, three of t'other).

That plan got relegated to the back burner when I sighted that Vertical six-pack still there at Tahbilk.

We're talking everyday drinking here, and the Kilikanoon order would have been working that territory, with the Mort's Reserve as a compare and contrast exercise since I was quite impressed by the difference when we were at the winery back in November 2008.

There's an order for a mix of the latest releases from Grosset going in later this week, so we'll be OK for the premium end of the Riesling market for a while.

For everyday drinking, however, I find it difficult to go past $75 freight free for half a dozen bottles going back this far, which explains why the Tahbilk stocks are about to go down by a couple of boxes, and when I run across Jimbo later this morning I'll be pointing him in the same direction.

Apart from the '09 and this one, the rest of the box slipped by without generating a tasting note, but that's part of the territory when you're talking everyday drinking, isn't it?…

According to the website, this one picked up Gold and Silver medals, though it doesn't indicate where.

When I took a gander at the ubiquitous Wikipedia, I also noted that Riesling (and I quote) is highly "terroir-expressive" … clearly influenced by the wine's place of origin. Well, we knew that, didn't we?

We're not talking Clare, Eden Valley, Tasmania or Great Southern here, but it's a wine that ain't too shabby.

Tahbilk 2006 Riesling (4.5* $n/a) Pale straw in the glass, and from the first sniff there was the familiar petrol notes that you come to expect in quality mature Riesling and the same notes came across when the wine hit the palate. Not, perhaps, in the same bracket as mature examples from premium growers in more highly rated regions, but mature Riesling of this quality at this price point (a notional $12.50 as part of a vertical half-dozen) and this quality underlines extreme value on offer if you know where to look.