The Otherness Skuld Riesling 2022 was made by Torbreck’s Ian Hongell.
I only had the pleasure of dining at FermentAsian in Tanunda once, but it was a memorable occasion of superb food, great wines and seriously good sommelier service. Grant Dickson was the somm there, and in 2016 he won the top award of Australia’s Wine List of the Year.
These days he is running a different kind of eating place in Angaston, named Otherness. The name is shared by his own wine label, which is quite quirky and signals some outstanding and enterprising wines.
“Chance encounters, shared enthusiasms and a willingness to embrace new, perhaps untried possibilities within a region often unfairly stereotyped for producing only richly styled wine.” – Grant Dickson
The latest wine I’ve tasted I enjoyed perhaps the most of all. It’s reviewed in Cellar Talk this week: the Otherness Verthandi Riesling 2020: an off-dry Tasmanian riesling that is simply one of the finest Australian examples of a Mosel Valley style kabinett riesling that I’ve ever tasted. It was made by Rieslingfreak’s John Hughes from Tamar Valley grapes. The residual sugar is 35 grams per litre which puts it in the kabinett range.
Over the last two or three years I’ve also sampled Otherness rieslings from Clare and Eden Valley, the latter made by Ian Hongell (now of Torbreck) and the former made by Neil Pike (now-retired founding partner in Pike’s Wines).
Dickson has commissioned other Otherness wines from such luminaries as Dan Standish, Marco
This Article was originally published on The Real Review
