White Wine Weingut Birgit Eichinger Lamm Gruner Veltliner Erste Lage 2021. Birgit Eichinger is one of Austria’s first female winemakers. She founded her eponymous winery in 1992, with just 3.5 hectares of vineyard. It has since grown to 15 hectares and produces an impressive range of Austrian white wines, including Riesling, Roter Veltliner, and a rich Grüner Veltliner. Supported by her daughter Gloria and husband Christian, the operation at Birgit Eichinger winery remains relatively small but is highly renowned, within the Kamptal region and beyond. The winery has won countless awards, including trophies from Wein.Pur, and several tasting awards within the Kamptal DAC. This wine is sourced from the Lamm vineyards, located in the southeastern section of Heiligenstein. Its loamy loess soils make for particularly elegant and eloquent Grüner Veltliner. This is no exception – welcoming scents of honey, orange zest and white pepper emerge on the nose. It is rich and round in the mouth, with notes of yellow fruit, delicate smokiness, and clear acidity all rolling on the tongue. It has a long finish, with spices coming to the fore and potential for further evolution with some cellaring. Serve it with dark gamey meat, beef, or lamb.
2021
White Wine Weingut Birgit Eichinger Lamm Gruner Veltliner Erste Lage 2021
White Wine Pasqua Hey French Bianco. This sparky white comes from Pasqua Vigneti e Cantine, a family-run Italian winery which was founded by the Pasqua brothers in Verona in 1925. Since then three generations of the family have looked after the winery, crafting delicious and great value wines from local grape varieties. As well as traditional wines like Amarone della Valpolicella and Prosecco, they also produce more innovative bottles like this charming oak-aged Garganega. The full name of this wine is Hey French You could have made this but you didn’t”, a humorous dig at French winemaking prowess and the exceptional quality of this white. Grapes are sourced from select Garganega parcels on the Verona side of Mount Calvarina. The family blends together the finest vintages of the last decade, in this case 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018, to showcase the depth and complexity of the Garganega grape. Unlike the fruity, easy-going Soaves which most people associate with Garganega, this is an intense and multi-layered wine thanks to the ageing in used barrels for 6 months and partial fermentation in barrique. On the nose there are delicate floral, ripe orchard fruit and mineral notes while the palate offers a refreshing acidity, medium body, and hints of chamomile, almonds and white pepper on the finish.
Bianco
Wines Wine Albino Rocca Barbaresco Ronchi 2016. The story of Albino Rocca dates back to the 1940s when Albino’s father Giacomo started selling grapes from the family vineyards before beginning to bottle and sell his own wines. In the 1960s Albino founded the modern winery and laid the foundations for the thriving family business which is today run by his grandchildren. Over the years the family have expanded their vineyard holdings to incorporate prime parcels in Neive and San Rocco Seno d’Elvio as well as Barbaresco. This is their magnificent Barbaresco from the prized Ronchi vineyard which was planted over 50 years ago and boasts vines of up to 70 years of age. The Rocca family only make their Barbaresco Ronchi in the finest vintages in very limited quantities. To help express the intense and complex character of the Nebbiolo grape, the young wine is aged in 20 hectolitre Austrian and German oak barrels for 20 months followed by a further 9 months of ageing in the bottle. The result is an incredibly multi-layered, concentrated wine which continues to evolve and open up in the glass over the course of an evening. Pair with hearty game dishes such as a hearty venison ragu served over polenta or wintry stews.
2016