2006 Leo Buring Riesling Leonay Eden Valley

Community Tasting Notes (3) Avg Score: 89.7 points

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  1/26/2024 - Rote Kappelle Likes this wine: 93 Points

  Australia Day 2024. My difficult relationship with this country sees another year amidst deep sadness and yet also affection. I guess that is how love affairs tend to be. So it is with Australian Rieslings and I.
  
  In truth, my relationship with Leo Buring Riesling is less complicated. I adore them. Even when I have lost a lot of my taste for Oz Rieslings, my old and deep love for them continues. In a long marriage there may come a time when the physical enthusiasm wanes, or perhaps even dies, yet the love for something else, the spirit and soul of the person burns as bright as it ever did, maybe more so. I am wedded to the tradition of Leo Buring. To the sheer gift for survival. To the unending commitment to Riesling and making truly regional and varietal wines.
  
  I still remember my first Leonay with pristine clarity, like the wine itself. It was 1992 and the wine was a 1988 Leonay Clare Valley. I was entangled in a doomed but intoxicating affair that was probably the defining physical relationship of my life.
  
  This wine is under the gorgeous screw cap of destiny. It pours a lovely sparkling clean gold. The colour speaks of age but the brightness says it is not tired.
  
  The nose and palate are classic Oz Riesling. Kerosene, lime and lime zest, in the mouth there is also lemon, ripe and with that engaging combination of sweet and sour, a little butter and toast. The kero dominates the nose but the palate is balanced and delightful. Better still, the acid is not that piercing Oz Riesling acid that I just can't deal with but it is still fresh.
  
  I guess one might say the kero is some of the things I struggle with, summed up by the meanness of spirit referred to in Paul Kelly's 'Land of the Little Kings'. Yet the rest of the package is the stuff I do like - informality, a view that respect is earned not inherited, a willingness to take on a challenge and a stoicism that I both love and hate, as I do the philosophy. In the wine this is the sweet Meyer lemon, the purity of the fruit and the indomitable spirit of Leo Buring.
  
  The finish is long and the intensity is like the sun here; bright, burnishing and strong.
  
  The kero factor is something a drinker needs to allow for. Some hate it, some love it and some, like me can live with it if there is more to the wine.

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  10/19/2015 - Pverd wrote: 85 Points

  Quite deep mid yellow colour. If it wasn't under screw cap would say it was slightly oxidised as fruit was flat and acid low. Poor showing

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  1/12/2013 - CamWheeler wrote: 91 Points

  Riesling Rampage: The nose is starting to show some aged characters with some nutty, lightly honeyed elements in addition to florals and lime.The palate however is still extremely youthful with mouthwatering acidity and good depth to the fruit. Great length and plenty of potential here.

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