Light straw yellow colour. Heady notes of nougat and dried mango lift from the glass. Toasty developing characters are noted on entry but as it flows there’s lime and just-ripe mango fruit that brings life and vibrancy to it. Prodigious length is carried by finely built acidity and a judicious balance between it and subtle sweetness. A wine with a remarkable tense balance between poise and power.

The 2014 Spring Farm Block 114 Riesling leads with a toasty nose of cold buttered toast, lime marmalade, honeysuckle, lemongrass, tobacco and white pepper. In the mouth, the wine gives what was promised: this is saline and fine, expansive and composed. This is a really exciting wine. It's excellent, a perfectly preserved time-capsule of the season that was.

Releases like this remind us that Clare Valley riesling has every right to ascend pricepoints, its precious and unique status in Australian wine largely undervalued for so long. A gift to us drinkers, but with wines such as this, from a single plot, nurtured with experience to bottle and held back for release, it is fair play to hit premium pricepoints – and worthy. This is complex and layered, fabulous in its balance of freshness and yet beautiful decay. The texture pushes the wine into medium weight, crackling with honeycomb and buttery toast, yet set among fresh lime, grapefruity tang and cloudy green apple juice characters. The perfume similar in this regard, maturity and vitality hand in hand. A masterclass in maturing Clare riesling.