Winemaker Notes
Bright cherry red with aromas of ripe strawberries and black heart cherries. On the palate, red currants and sour cherry compote characters on the palate, over sweet strawberry confiture and a distinctive red wine character. Delicate citrus notes and a fine rum pot fruit on the finish.
Professional Ratings
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Vinous
The 2021 Beerenauslese Zweigelt is once again a feat of winemaking. It is made from 60-70% botrytized fruit, resulting in a brilliantly pink hue. The lift of botrytis adds lift to the candied strawberry note on the nose, along with a touch of pepper. The palate is rich, candied and sweet yet beautifully fresh. The purity of this wine is astonishing. Its length, creaminess and smoothness are next level.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Vinified in barriques for 18 months, the 2021 Beerenauslese Zweigelt is intense and finely spicy on the nose that intermingles with pencil tip aromas. Round and sweet on the palate, this is a generous but refined, elegant, vital and finely saline Zweiget with delicate tannins and lemon bitters on the finish. This is a nice sweet wine to be paired with food—peking duck, game dishes or (really) spicy curries, for example, or chocolate, walnut and nougat tart. 11% stated alcohol. Natural cork. Tasted in Lütjensee, Hamburg, in June 2023.
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James Suckling
A garnet-colored sweet wine that expresses figs, poached plums and cocktail cherries on the nose, along with rose syrup. It’s sweet and full-bodied, soft and pleasing. Drink or hold.
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Wine Spectator
A distinctive style, with a pinkish-amber hue and earthy tones of tobacco leaf backing up sweet raspberry and cassis, all layered with honeycomb and toasted walnut. A tug of tannins gives a counterpoint of structure to the long finish. Stays fresh and spicy. Drink now through 2035. 150 cases imported.
Apart from the classics, we find many regional gems of different styles.
Late harvest wines are probably the easiest to understand. Grapes are picked so late that the sugars build up and residual sugar remains after the fermentation process. Ice wine, a style founded in Germany and there referred to as eiswein, is an extreme late harvest wine, produced from grapes frozen on the vine, and pressed while still frozen, resulting in a higher concentration of sugar. It is becoming a specialty of Canada as well, where it takes on the English name of ice wine.
Vin Santo, literally “holy wine,” is a Tuscan sweet wine made from drying the local white grapes Trebbiano Toscano and Malvasia in the winery and not pressing until somewhere between November and March.
Rutherglen is an historic wine region in northeast Victoria, Australia, famous for its fortified Topaque and Muscat with complex tawny characteristics.
Fog and humidity arise from the Neusiedlersee (lake), and extend over the wet flatlands region of the same name, all the way to Austria’s border with Hungary. This moisture, coupled with the daily sunshine that reflects from its wet surfaces, serves as the perfect environment for the development of the desirable fungus called, Botrytis cinerea.
This fungus causes the grapes to essentially “rot” and dry, concentrating their sugars for harvest. It also helps the grapes develop intricate phenolic complexities leading to some of the most sought-after and unique sweet wines in the world. Austrian law categorizes these botrytized, sweet wines according to the must weight (sugar concentration) at harvest in the same way as the Germans. So the wines will be labeled, Auslese, Beerenauslese, Trockenbeerenauslese and Eiswein.
While the region’s reputation has historically ridden on the success of its sweet, botrytized wines, in 2011, Austria granted the official appellation of origin, Neusiedlersee, to its high quality Zweigelt red wines. As a result, any of its prestigious sweet wines will be actually be labeled after the general region of Burgenland.
Neusiedlersee’s slopes of mica, schist, limestone and variations in gravel, sand and clay make it ideal for its indigenous red varieties, Blaufränkisch, St. Laurent and Zwiegelt, as well as the international varieties of Pinot Noir (Blauburgunder), Merlot, Cabernet and even Syrah.
Though not widely planted here, some white wines, such as Pinot Blanc (Weissburgunder), have distinguished themselves locally.