Wurzelwerk - 9 Riesling - 3 Vintners - 3 Vineyards / Blind Tasting /
project: "Rootwork & Winemaker's contribution”
3 hell of a vintners: There Breuer (Rheingau), Johannes Hasselbach (Rheinhessen), Alwin Jurtschitsch (Kamptal)
9 Rieslings - 2016 vintage - 3 world-class Riesling vineyards from 3 regions in 2 countries
motto: "Give me your juice - I'll give you mine"
A unique and at the same time courageous series of 9 Riesling wines grown on 3 of the most renowned Riesling sites in the world. The one of a kind project is aptly summarised on the following illustration:
The idea is to take the grapes from one winery, transport them immediately after harvest to the cellar of another of the three wineries, where they are then pressed - hundreds of kilometers from the origin - fermented, aged and finally bottled as finished wine.
The goal can be summarised in one sentence: How little and how much is behind the term terroir? How does the taste change, the structure alters and the character adopts. I have never even heard something comparable to that, I was utterly excited to finally get my nose into these 9 glasses with other seasoned sommeliers and wine buyers. We had to guess the place and the vintners blindly.
Since I’ve only had the pleasure of tasting the Heiligenstein before, as it also sits proudly on our wine list, I had to rely entirely on the presentation of the trader presenting the project to make even stand a chance for success.
3 vineyards:
Nonnenberg
solely owned by the Breuer Winery
vineyards face south and southwest
range from 108 to 183 meters above sea level
lopes ranging from 28 to 57 percent
soil is almost free of limestone and is composed of phyllite schist and quartzites covered by a layer of loess and clay
Rothenberg
southeastern steep slopes sloping down to the Rhine
Rothenberg has red clay slates, in which thin limestone veins are intercalated
The Rothenberg has a slope between 30 and 80 percent
almost subtropical climate conditions (on paper the warmest site)
Heiligenstein
Its height is up to 360 m
its foot in the southwest flows the river Kamp
soil type is a compressed desert sandstone with a lot of quartz and a high silicate content
forest on the plateau brings coolness and humidity to the Heiligenstein
the most exposed and warmest site in Kamptal (although cold Northern winds are common there from the neighbouring ‘Weinviertel region’)
Long story short, we all missed. The “warmest place” (at least on the palate) ended up being the Heiligenstein. /3rd flight/ The second flight in the middle felt the most inorganic, precise and least generous for me, so I called the “precise” Heiligenstein on it. Of course, it turned out to be the “warmest” (on paper), the Rothenberg. Mistaking the Heiligenstein for the Nonnenberg was not most pleasant realisation, but I can live with it.
After slowly rising out of my ashes after this embarrassing reveal, and regained some confidence, I couldn’t help saying out loud the thought that I have been chanting in my head for the last 5 minutes:
“I’m sorry, I’m not the greatest blind taster of all times, but I’m pretty confident that I can differentiate a warm vineyard from a cool one. And for me, Heiligenstein is always rather cool.”
“Well, that experience raises the deep question for the right definition of terroir indeed.”
And indeed. Is terroir the soil of the vineyard? Is terroir the climate in which the grapes ripen? Or is terroir the cellar and its yeasts? And how does a wine taste that was finished in the Rheingau, but nourished by grapes that come from the Kamptal? And how does that wine taste whose grapes took the opposite route?
We ended up sitting there 2 hours talking about terroir, discussing potential clues and subtle differences. At the end we disagreed and basically all of us got screwed in one way or another. If I would have known about this relieving debate happening towards the end, the freedom for confidently failing and insecurely murmuring would have been much easier to embrace.
I loved it.