Riesling Riede Steiner Schreck „This is not a love song“ 2019

Wine Description for Riesling Riede Steiner Schreck „This is not a love song“ 2019 by HM Lang

Colour & Appearance

Light to medium golden yellow with delicate green reflexes – luminous and clear, displaying remarkable transparency despite its unfiltered character.

Nose

A wine that demands patience – and rewards it generously. Initially closed and enigmatic, scarcely recognisable as Riesling. With time and air, a fascinating tableau unfolds: verbena and white flowers, citrus and mandarin, mirabelle plum and crisp peach. Add to this a hint of lanolin, anise, stone scree and white pepper – a spice that immediately recalls the gneiss and granite of Steiner Schreck.

Palate

Saline, crystalline, electrifying. The acidity strikes forcefully at first – taut, precise, almost uncompromising. Combined with a lively residual carbonation that lends the wine additional tension. With increasing aeration, the profile transforms: the wine becomes silkier, juicier, more piquant, without losing its definition. Mouth-watering salinity runs like a leitmotif through the entire palate.

Finish

Long, powerful and marked by remarkable elegance. The mineral saline finale resonates – positively electrifying, yet never crossing the threshold into heaviness.

Terroir & Origin

The grapes hail from one of the steepest vineyard sites in the Kremstal: the Steiner Schreck, at approximately 320 metres altitude. Soil composed of Gföller gneiss and granite imparts the wine with a distinctive minerality. Viticulture follows Demeter guidelines – biodynamic and uncompromising.

Grape Variety & Vinification

Riesling from 80-year-old vines, harvested on 8 September 2019 at natural 11.5 % vol. – testament to ripeness without overripeness. The must was pressed over two days on a specially constructed 100-tonne wooden press with extreme slowness and complete reductive conditions, subsequently exposed deliberately to controlled oxidation. Spontaneous fermentation occurred with the addition of 3–5 % destemmed grapes, which ferment intracellularly according to the principle of macération carbonique, repeatedly triggering the process at a constant cool 9 °C in the cellar. Over two and a half years, the wine matured on full lees in a Bordeaux stoneware amphora (1,000 l), unfiltered and minimally sulphited. Bottled in February 2021 with 0 g/l residual sugar and 8.0 g/l total acidity.

Distinctive Characteristics

A wine that fully deserves its provocative title: no charmer, no crowd-pleaser. This Riesling is a character wine – crafted with radical integrity, terroir-true and of a complexity that only reveals itself with time. Not for the impatient. For everyone else: a unique specimen of Austrian Riesling.