Ried Zieregg Sauvignon Blanc Vinothek Reserve Große STK Lage 2019

The Zieregg vineyard is divided into 17 individual parcels due to its rich diversity. The grape material for the Vinothek Reserve comes from "Die Sieben Reihen", an extremely steep and well-ventilated plot with blue chalky marl soil. The old vines there are particularly small and produce concentrated, dense musts. Harvested by hand and fermented spontaneously, the must is aged for 36 months in neutral wooden barrels.

Straw yellow with a silver tapered rim.

The 2019 Ried Zieregg Vinothek Reserve Sauvignon blanc by Tement shows itself silent, so the carafe or the big expensive glass is advised, better both. Then you have to wait, because this wine has no time pressure. And what for. Rather, it reflects impatience and one's own expectations, only slowly begins to tell of the future and its potential, which is only dimly visible in the glass at the moment. Aromatically, it is enormously disciplined for a Sauvignon blanc, herbs set the pace sage, lemon balm, ginger and the citrusy, cedary notes of first-class white pepper mix with the timid fruit. Grapefruit zest, lemon blossom, cassis leaf and green mangoes fill its belly, along with salty notes of crushed oyster shells and wet blackboard chalk.

On the palate, the Zieregg Reserve is of compressed stature, condensed almost to the point of painfully meagre. Like a mille-feuille, it unpeels layer after layer on the palate, unpacks document after document like a Win-Zip file and thus, with sufficient aeration and patience, finds its gripping greatness. In its youth, a quiet wine that does not run around the Christmas tree of striking aromatics, but demands time. Time to come to terms with one of the great wines of this grape variety. A closed, extremely complex appearance with immense tension and high density despite the defined muscular, never bolide body. The acidity functions as the pulse of the wine, around which the tartly animating and grippy phenolic nestles, roughening it up a bit on the tongue edge, which makes the cup fill up quickly. Drinking it now is infanticide, but it's great fun. Because great wine always tastes good, with or without food, matured or young.