Why Australian riesling is different from the old world?

I think it's kind of funny that Jancis Robinson has compared the Bordeaux '09 to Napa. The good ol' days were all about the former: Comparing new products to established legends. Will the future bring us more comparisons of yardsticks to current trends? What will happen when the yardstick is being made to resemble more the wine that compares itself to legend? Will the alcohol and prices escalate? Everything flows to this same pond full of hot climate wine. The classic notion of narrowing circle: Australia's snow will never melt but Europe will warm.

                                                         Is it too hot in Finland?

I like riesling but I hate having too free sulfur dioxide in my wines. A contradiction. The 6 rieslings from Australia I tasted all had some residual sugar so I suppose they had been filtered and sulfured accordingly. They were not the perfect example what comes from Australia but some notions more from the quality levels of the wines can be drawn up.

4 out of 6 wines came from warmer/hot climate even though the alcohol level wasn't overwhelming but there was the riper fruit profile and a herbal and minty taint to mouth. Which could have come from the fact they were machine harvested - supporting the vegetal profile that was found in some wines that had ripe fruit. There was also the reductive aromas and hotness left on palate from the sulfur dioxide that led me to mistakenly assume about the alcohol levels sometimes.

The other two had a cooler climate fruit more like Pfalz than Mosel. There was the typical Aussie zesty lemon&lime profile with a nice intensity but not enough complexity. Some of the wines had started to evolve nicely. They had overwhelmingly too high prices for quality levels are probably the main reason people marketed them versus old world. Interested to try more when given the opportunity.

Do add or remove something else from their wines there? I think the residual sugar masked up some of the most obvious hints. Also the malic acid levels could have been much lower here than cool climates so maybe that explains why they were not as beautiful.

I don't want to drink a 17-euro-wine from Australia that is supposed to taste like same price Alsatian. I suppose they are cheaper down under.

I'll mention the wines tasted below so that you can find out that one cannot draw too much conclusions. This was supposed to be a night of terroir and aging discovery.

The rieslings with 5% traminer to perfume things up more:

Wolf Blass Riesling Yellow Label 2006

Penfold's Koonunga Hill Autumn Riesling 2008

Wynn's Riesling 2005

Annie's Lane 2006

Penfold's bin 51 2008

Wolf Blass Gold Label 2005