Grey Freedom – 2020

Graue Freyheit 2020 as an Orange Wine from Weingut Heinrich

Graue Freyheit 2020 by Gernot Heinrich is a skin-fermented orange wine from Burgenland, bottled unfiltered and without the addition of sulfur. It is not a white wine in the traditional sense, but rather a cloudy natural wine with a rosy hue, cool tension, and gripping tannins.

Graue Freyheit 2020 is the oldest vintage of this orange wine from the Gernot Heinrich winery in Gols, in Austria's Burgenland region, bringing together Pinot Blanc, Pinot Gris, Chardonnay, and Neuburger. The gray variety comes from the Hackelsberg at Jois, a hillside that faces away from Lake Neusiedl and sits on quartz slate. The remaining varieties are grown on the limestone eastern slopes of the Leithaberg. The vintage has 12.5 percent alcohol, resulting in a lean profile.

Why this Pinot Gris appears rosy in the glass

Pinot Gris possesses reddish-tinted berry skins, and because the skins remain in the must for days, their color migrates into the finished wine.

Therefore, what sits in the glass is not a pale white-wine yellow, but a coppery rosé that shifts toward orange in angled light. Anyone served this blindly would likely guess a robust rosé wine rather than Pinot Gris at first glance. Red berries rise from the glass, underpinned by the dry spice of black tea.

On the palate, orange zest runs through with fine herbal spice, carried by tannins that grip rather than scratch. "Full of finesse, coolness, and tension with animating tannins," is how the winery describes this wine. After years in the light-proof clay, the tension has noticeably calmed without the freshness suffering for it.

Harvest in late summer and maturation in amphora and barrel

The grapes were harvested by hand between the end of August and early September 2020, early enough for them to bring their coolness into the cellar.

Afterward, the berries spent 15 days on the skins and underwent spontaneous fermentation, using only the yeasts from the vineyard. It was only then that a basket press separated the juice from the skins so gently that no bitterness was carried over. Pinot Blanc makes up the majority in this vintage, while the gray variety contributes the smaller portion.

This was followed by 17 months on the lees, partly in amphorae and partly in a large, used oak barrel. Having been used many times, the wood long ago ceased to impart its own flavor and now serves only as a breathing shell. In mid-March 2022, the wine was bottled into the characteristic clay bottle, unfiltered and without the addition of sulfur.

Who should sit down with this bottle

An aged mountain cheese meets a wine here that counters it with tannins and coolness instead of disappearing under the saltiness.

A roast pork with a crackling crust stands up to it just as well, and smoked trout finds its match in the smoky depth of this vintage. It belongs in the glass cool, but definitely not ice-cold, otherwise the spice is lost behind the temperature. A bulbous glass helps noticeably because the herbal spice can unfold better over the larger surface area.

The Graue Freyheit 2022 shows how the same wine sounds in a warmer year, with the gray variety receiving significantly more space. If you want to stick with cloudy bottles, the rest of the shelf awaits you in Orange Wine. The clear counterparts from the same house can be found in White Wine, where the cellar operates differently.

Graue Freyheit – a natural wine and its values

• Origin: Natural wine from Austria
• 50% Pinot Blanc
• 20% Pinot Gris
• 15% Chardonnay
• 15% Neuburger
• 12.5% ABV Alcohol
• 5.9 g/l Acidity
• 1.0 g/l Residual sugar

Organic inspection body AT-BIO-402 – Austrian Agriculture