Adelaide Hills summer refreshers

Adelaide Hills | 12.5% | $28
Turon White’s Hills Series wines focus on freshness, purity and drinkability and he ticks the boxes on all three in this very attractive Pinot G. Winemaking details include whole bunch pressing, wild ferment in barrel and stainless steel, three months lees contact. A complete wine from the outset, where the fruits and florals become one aromatic exhibit, followed by a lovely creamy palate feel, fuller flavours like Williams pear and fragrant spice notes swirling in and around each other, finishing off with a mouth-filling texture and well-mannered richness. Plenty of pleasure to be had with this one.

Adelaide Hills | 12.7% | $26
Sourced from Dave Neyle and Inga Lidum’s vineyard in Woodside, though their home base blocks, cellar door and restaurant are at Mt Torrens, this has all the variety’s familiar summery tropical attractions to begin, though neatly under control, more elegant, with well designed flavours and textures. Some subtle anise spice adds interest to the creamy palate, with citrus zest and pith to freshen up in the finish. All rounded and delicious and just the ticket to accompany the season’s fare of seafood and salads. And when it comes to highly flavoured south-east Asian dishes, nothing is better.

Adelaide Hills | 13% | $62
One of a stylish portfolio of four Hills sparklings from the hands of Xavier Bizot, all sourced from his home ground of the Piccadilly Valley, all made in the traditional bottle fermented style, as in Champagne, which he calls Method Classic. This is a cuvee of three varieties, Pinot Meunier at 66%, Pinot Noir at 30% and a smidge of Chardonnay at 4%, and includes a tiny addition of Pinot Noir table wine for colour, which results in an attractive pale pink, exuding delicate rose notes with some wood spice in play as well. Drinking, there’s good concentration of flavour and texture, strawberried with a cheerful fruit tingle through the palate. Well put together, delicious to sip with reasonable depth of character from 22 months of tirage (second fermentation and ageing time in the bottle) yet always at the ready to be refreshing and exciting with great length – not that you’ll notice it as you pour a second glass without pause.

Adelaide Hills | 13% | $35
Albarino is a Portuguese/Spanish origin white variety that has had its ups and downs after coming into Australia a couple of decades ago. Fortunately it has now settled well and if this is anything to go by, sourced from a smart vineyard in the Charleston district, it’s all about the ups. Subtle and alluring aromas – field grasses, orchard blossom – before these infuse a fragrant seam into the palate, fresh apple and white nectarine fruits, a tiny zesting of lemon, nothing getting in the way of its pure lines in the palate that exit with a mouthwatering pith. Delicious across both savoury and spicy foods, from Japanese to Thai.

Adelaide Hills | 13% | $24
From a warm, dry and early vintage, this sits more with savoury elements than often seen strawberry-like fruit bomb characters, exhibiting kitchen garden aromas like thyme and earthiness, native foliage as well such as saltbush and even more exotic blossom high notes like magnolia – subtle though seductive – all tempered with a gentle touch of charry oak. Now bring all this together into the palate with a thread of black cherry flavour and neatly fitted, soft velcro tannin grip – the wine is still a little tight in its youth but will unfold and open with more personality over summer. Excellent value.

Adelaide Hills | 12.5% | $110
A few basics to start, though this wine, one of the leading ambassadors of Hills Sparklings, is far, far from basic. The Blanc de Blancs title refers to its all-Chardonnay fruit composition. It is made in the Traditional Method with minimum seven years maturing magnificently (tirage) in the bottle you are drinking. First disgorged and finished in the same bottle ready to be popped mid-year 2025 and on-going as we speak. Nose and palate enjoying a perfectly measured, complex tirage character, with crunchy white fruits and faint edges of trad-method aldehyde for complete capture of the style’s finer elements. Further, a delicious lemon curd and biscuit flavour fills the flavour sensories while a linear trajectory of acidity keeps things fresh, a fine chalk in the finish for added moreishness. A major achievement. Drink this, not Champagne.