Winemaker Notes
Medium-golden yellow in appearance. Aromas of grapefruit and pineapple exude from the glass. Papaya, mango and lychee are present on the palate. Expressive mineral characters on the finish.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2002 Trockenbeerenauslese No. 8 Welschriesling Zwischen den Seen offers a pure, deep and spicy, lovey plummy and oxidized bouquet of salty apricots and caramel along with malty hints and tobacco notes. Rich and elegant on the palate, with remarkable finesse and freshness, this is a saline, refined and caramelly TBA with fine bitters on the finish that also exhibits enormous sweetness. 8.5% stated alcohol. Natural cork. Tasted at the domaine in July 2022. Best After 2022
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Wine Spectator
Gorgeous, with an elegant structure and impressive richness. This has a deep well of butterscotch, almond, ripe pear and candied apricot flavors that are flanked by seductive spicy and creamy notes. Finishes with fine balance and freshness.
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.
The source of Austria’s finest botrytized sweet wines, Burgenland covers a lofty portion of Austria's wine producing real estate. It encompasses the smaller regions of Neusiedlersee, Neusiedlersee-Hügelland, Mittelburgenland and Südburgenland. The latter two are most associated with their exceptional red wines. The region as a whole produces no shortage of important whites.
Neusiedlersee, named for the lake that it surrounds to the east, is home to a great diversity of grape varieties. The region’s most notable wines, however, are the botrytis-infected, sweet versions.
Neusiedlersee-Hügelland, which wraps the lake on its western side, includes the town of Rust, a historically esteemed wine community. Its close proximity to the lake’s fog and mist make it another source of some of the more prestigious botrytized wines. Neusiedlersee-Hügelland also produces fine Blaufränkisch, Pinot Blanc, Neuburger and Grüner Veltliner, though a label will usually name the more general, Burgenland, so as not to confuse it with its eastern cousin, Neusiedlersee, across the lake.
Blaufränkisch is well suited to and makes up over half of the vineyard area in Mittelburgenland. The region’s hills and plateaus, which are composed of variations in schist, loess and clay-limestone, produce high quality reds with interesting diversity.
Südburgenland, also known for its deep, complex and age-worthy Blaufränkisch, is beginning to turn out some alluring whites from Grüner Veltliner, Welschriesling and Weissburgunder (Pinot Blanc).