Willowglen Gewurztraminer Riesling 2014

Go to a high class sweet shop. Buy a bag of their best turkish delight, and eat a piece of it. Eat another one while you go to a fruit shop and buy a lime. Eat another while you go home, and still more when you arrive. Cut the lime in half, and breathe in deeply of the flowers on your mantelpiece, while you suck on the lime. You are in a sensory rapture. And you're full of posh sweets. Mmmm... But next time, save yourself the effort and just grab a bottle of this lusciously exotic, evocative semi-sweet feast of turkish delight, rosewater and citrus. And some Werther's Originals, to calm yourself down.

Vittorio de Bortoli arrived in Melbourne from Italy in 1924, and sought farm work in Riverina, New South Wales. Times were tough, but by 1927 he had scraped together enough money to buy a small farm in Bilbul, producing his first table wine in 1928, in response to the country's fondness for fortified wines. Unprecedented demand soon led to exports to the north of New South Wales and beyond to Queensland, and production increased sharply over the next eight years. The winery survived the Depression, the paranoia of the war years and the impact of alcohol rationing and in 1952 Vittorio's energetic young son, Deen de Bortoli, took the helm of the winery and led it down a route of innovation. Production and distribution expanded dramatically, while new wine styles, viticultural practices and technology all provided grist to his mill. Having continually pushed things forward throughout the Australian wine boom of the 60s and 70s, Deen entrusted the winery to the family and its core values of hard work and generous spirit.

The Bilbul winery in Riverina produces not only Willowglen Gewurztraminer Riesling, but also a number of De Bortoli's top end flag-bearers, not least the remarkable Noble One Botrytis Semillon. A Mediterranean climate, bringing warm summers and welcome rain in winter, is a fine match for the region's various loam soils. Sustainability is high on the winery's agenda, a firm hand being taken to water recycling, vineyard mulching and the control of greenhouse gas emissions, among other initiatives.

The parcels of each varietal were chosen with particular characteristics in mind: spicy musk and rose petal flavours for the Gewurztraminer, floral and citrus for the Riesling. The parcels are fermented separately, using particular yeasts with each of them to emphasise their individual traits, with blending, clarification stabilisation and filtration following afterwards.

Musk and spice meet on the nose, backed by a hint of citrus, while rosewater and Turkish Delight follow on the generous palate, accompanied by a crisp citrus lift from the Riesling.