Bleasdale's 2012 Verdelho has a great perfume and delivers melon and fruit salad flavours with refreshing crisp natural acidity. Drinking brilliantly in its youth, the wine will develop toast and honey flavours over the next 2-3 years. A very estery lifted fruit wine in a dry and unwooded style.
Enjoy with seafood.
James Halliday, Australian Wine Companion, on the 2010 vintage: "High-toned banana and pear aromas with citrus notes emerging on the palate; from 90-year-old vines." (89 points)
Matthew Nugent, Irish Mail on Sunday, January 2012, on the 2010 vintage: "Spain’s Verdelho grape has settled well in Langhorne Creek. Naturally crisp acidity with melon, pineapple and guava notes. Nice weight and a lingering finish."
Henry (Fiddle) Potts was a grandson of Bleasdale's founder, Frank Potts. During the worldwide depression of the 1920s and 30s, Fiddle took to fishing in Lake Alexandrina to supplement his family's income. The front label shows Fiddle, far right, holding a monster Mulloway netted in the lake.
While many South Australian family wineries died with their entrepreneurial founders, Bleasdale, established in 1850, still survives proudly today.
Through the challenges of the 1930s and 1940s when Britain's Imperial Preference for Australian wine was removed; the 1950s when Australian tastes swung from fortifieds to table wine; and through the 1980s and 1990s when consumers demanded Chardonnay and Cabernet not Verdelho and Shiraz, the Potts family has changed, innovated and persisted.
Other than Yalumba it is the longest running family owned winery in Australia, a proud heritage of commitment and dedication to an industry and a region.
2010 vintage:
Gold Medal: Cowra Wine Show, August 2010
89 points: James Halliday, Australian Wine Companion
Recommened by Matthew Nugent, Irish Mail on Sunday, January 2012
