Grosset off-dry riesling with a Chinese New Year’s Eve feast

We had a great feast with friends on Saturday night to celebrate the Chinese New Year, cooking a range of dishes from Fuchsia Dunlop’s fabulous Every Grain of Rice about which I was raving last week.

They included fiery fish-fragrant aubergines (right), beef with cumin (unusual for China), pungent dried shrimp with cabbage and a wonderfully quirky dish called ‘smacked cucumber’ which contained Sichuan pepper and chilli oil. A challenge for any wine.

I had high hopes of Jeffrey Grosset’s 2010 Off-Dry Watervale Riesling from the Clare Valley region of South Australia but couldn’t have imagined how well it would work.

It was superbly balanced with that trademark Clare Valley lime character but managed to be light (only 11.5%) and powerful at the same time and intensely flavoured enough to stand up to all the punchy flavours in the food.

In fact it was so dry I was amazed to find it contains 16g/litre of residual sugar according to Grosset's UK importer Liberty Wines. (The acidity is 9g per litre).

On the strength of that bottle I ordered six more (from Rannoch & Scott who still seem to have a few left at the time of writing as does slurp.co.uk and Australian Wines Online.

If you can find it, grab it. It’s among the best Aussie rieslings I’ve tasted, including Grosset’s own Polish Hill. The 2012 vintage, now called Alea*, is supposed to be even better.

* Possibly the 'off-dry' description may have created the wrong impression - don't let that put you off though.