The best of wines turns out to be the worst of wines. Wine writer RICHARD CALVER tells the story… 

THIS is a story of the best of wines and the worst of wines; here note my literary pretension, the emulation of Charles Dickens’ immortal opening lines of “A Tale of Two Cities”: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”. Plus there’s a twist at the end.

But the difference is that these wines were exactly the same: two bottles of 2018 Tertini Southern Highlands Riesling.

A mate and I were exercising and on return from a walk around the bridge-to-bridge portion of our inglorious Lake Burley Griffin (replete that day with a flotilla of floating garbage), we purchased a 2018 Tertini Southern Highlands Riesling because the purported price reduction was from $35 to $18. This seemed to be reflected in the shortage of stock: there were just two bottles available. He purchased one. The outlet is a high-end grocery/mixed business in Barton.

The Tertini was delightful. It was a true cool-climate riesling with lime zest and green apple, a clean freshness that finished well. At below $20 a bottle, this was good value-for-money drinking that complemented the chicken fried rice I supplied as my part of the post exercise repast. 

My friend declared that this was: “A successful experiment all round which should be repeated.” 

To that end he went back to the Barton outlet a couple of days later and, as the second bottle was still on the shelf, he laid out another $18.

A few days later, he brought around the second bottle of Tertini. We looked forward to another glass or two of this austere but pleasant riesling. 

Things started poorly with a loud “pop” as the screw cap was turned. This generally indicates that the seal has broken and per se this doesn’t mean that the wine is spoiled. 

But then the sour smell of kerosene and old sack hit the nose and the colour was not a pale straw (as with the first bottle) but a dark yellow. There was none of the earlier delight; the wine also tasted of petroleum heavy with kerosene, appeared to be oxidised and was undrinkable. The two glasses poured went down the sink. 

When my friend went back to the establishment with the remaining two-thirds still in the bottle he was met by outright refusal to make good the purchase. When he told me of this experience, I was first angry, then disappointed. 

The issue of bottle-to-bottle variation is rare but can obviously occur when moving the wine from source to retailer; this bottle appeared to suffer from heat stroke or inadvertent damage that knocked the seal and spoiled the libation. 

I wanted to get a handle on the attitude of the winery to this issue so I called a number obtained from Linked-In (the company’s website had just a sales email in place and a lovely picture of a vineyard). 

I spoke to Craig Moxey, former operations manager at the winery, now retired. Moxey said that the kerosene flavour can be induced by the grapes getting sunburned and that the better riesling the company formerly produced was from its Yaraandoo vineyard and the rieslings from there did have an expected hint, hint only, of kerosene. 

But the big news was a shock. He also told me that the winery had closed down and that since January all of its wines had been cleared. The cupboard is now bare. The closure was due to the failure of a farm succession plan. 

Moxey said that the closing down was reluctantly undertaken and he wanted me to be clear that the winery, when in operation, stood behind all of its wines and would have done the right thing about my friend’s complaint.