Gobelsburg - Tradition Riesling 2012 (1.5L)
Price: $104.00
| Producer | Gobelsburg |
| Country | Austria |
| Varietal | Riesling |
| Vintage | 2012 |
| Sku | 01878 |
Gobelsburg Description
The ‘Tradition’ wines are related to the early 19th century – especially to the period between around 1800 and 1850. This period is marked on one side by the period of baroque, where intense aromatisation in vinfication was practice. With the upcoming Romantic aromatisation yielded the idea of pure nature and the ‘pure’ taste. Besides that winemakers were looking back to an empirical knowledge of nearly 2000 years of winemaking. On the other hand this period is marked in the middle of the century by the upcoming industrialisation which has been leading to more and more technology in the cellar and started to change the craftsmanship side of winemaking. This development leads step by step to the point, when we start to talk about modern winemaking, which focuses on the question of aromas and fruit components.
200 years ago the cellar masters of Gobelsburg had a completely different idea on wine. Wine was seen in these days much more as an individual. They compared wine with the human being and believed that as we humans have to undergo certain development, also a wine has to do so. And as we have to breathe, also a wine has to breathe in order to accomplish all that. These considerations have been leading to the common practice to rack the wine from cask to cask to let the wine breath in order to encourage the next step of his development. This was repeated several times and was called the ‘teaching’ of the wine (ger: die Schulung). Here the relation between wine and cellar master can be seen in the same way as the relation between a teacher and his pupil. The task of the cellar master was to identify the potential of the wine and according to that, ‘teach’ him up to his potential. This can be seen in contradiction to our today’s modern imagination that great wine is made in the vineyard and not in the cellar. In our todays mind we belief that the big art of making a great wine is to do ‘nothing’.
The grapes are pressed with a basket press for low sediment content, without further sedimentation the wines are fermented without temperature control in 25 hl Manhartsberg oak casks (double foudre). After the fermentation the wines are racked every 3 to 4 months to let the wine ‘breathe’ on one side, but on the other side to go off the lees. This process lasts for about two years until the wine is ready to be bottled.
Wine Advocate: 95 Points
Believe me or not, but the 2012 Riesling Tradition, which keeps its true origin as a useless secret (Niederösterreich), is the finest and most subtle Austrian Riesling I have tasted this summer. The nose is very Burgundian in its purity, elegance and subtle expression of fruit and mineral-rich terroir (which is the Kammerner Gaisberg by the way). It shows the purity, multi-facetedness, noblesse and serenity of a great wine which does not care about primary fruit aromas (like the 2013 Erste Lage Gaisberg does in a lovely way), but reveals enormously subtle flavors of flowers, herbs, crystalline stones and fruits like honeydew, nuts and turkish honey. The palate is highly elegant and perfectly balanced, the taste noble, complex and long without exposing anything else but finesse, elegance and harmony. Going back to younger, more fruit-driven wines from here would be a banal exercise. The old monks knew quite well what they did and they obviously knew what tastes good. "The most important thing about Tradition is not its origin (thus Niederösterreich) but the philosophy of élevage," says Michi Moosbrugger. But isn't this the same as if we would talk about how an artist plays the piano without listening to it?
-Stephan Reinhardt
