Pinot Blanc Salzberg – 2018

Weißburgunder Salzberg from the Gernot Heinrich winery in Gols

Weißburgunder Salzberg from Gernot Heinrich is a single-vineyard white wine from two sun-exposed rows of vines on the Gols Salzberg, aged for eighteen months in large oak barrels. This is not a light summer white wine, but a dense, salty wine with a creamy texture and a body that replaces heaviness with density.

Weißburgunder Salzberg is the white single-vineyard wine from the Gernot Heinrich winery in Gols, in Austria's Burgenland region, rooted in sandy loam soil with a high lime content. The Salzberg is one of the well-known Gols vineyard sites, and the vines for the 2018 vintage are cultivated biodynamically. With 13.0 percent alcohol, this Pinot Blanc carries its density without any sense of heaviness.

Pear, linden honey, and mineral saltiness

A medium yellow with green reflections in the glass, the nose reveals herbal hints, meadow flowers, and a distinct pear fruit side by side.

Added to this are honey notes, like those wafting from a blooming linden tree in June. On the palate, the wine is juicy, elegant, and substantial, without ever losing the salty edge that this site imparts to its wines. The fruit remains calm and never pushes itself to the forefront. This is exactly how you can recognize the Salzberg even years later in a blind tasting.

"With a creamy texture and a body that replaces heaviness with density, it is bursting with tension, vitality, and temperament," is how the winery describes this wine. The long, austere finish confirms this description, as it lingers long after the glass is empty.

From the harvest to the large oak barrel

It was harvested by hand in mid-September 2018, and what followed was primarily time, as this wine received more of it than most of the estate's white wines.

The grapes remained on the skins for one night before being gently pressed. Fermentation started on its own, carried by the yeasts that had come with the grapes from the vineyard. The malolactic fermentation also occurred without intervention, giving the wine its velvety texture.

It was then left on its own natural lees in large oak barrels for eighteen months and was only bottled unfiltered in April 2020. Only two sun-exposed rows of vines provide the harvest for this bottling. Forgoing filtration preserves the wine's texture while also explaining why there is never much of this bottling on the shelf.

What this Pinot Blanc pairs well with at the table

Creamy veal roast, baked celery, and aged mountain cheese look for exactly this mix of creaminess and salt, and find it in this glass.

It should be served at around ten degrees Celsius, as the substantial texture loses its contour if it is too cold. Because it was bottled unfiltered, a fine sediment may appear at the bottom of the bottle, which can simply be left in the bottle when pouring. 750 milliliters will carry you through an entire meal.

The white counterpart from the other side of the lake is the Chardonnay Leithaberg, which grows on calcareous sandstone and mica schist and spent less time in wood. You can see what else comes from Gols at the Gernot Heinrich winery, and further vineyard wines of this type can be found under white wine.

Weißburgunder Salzberg – a wine and its values

• Origin: Wine from Austria
• Region: Burgenland
• Site: Golser Salzberg
• Grape variety: Pinot Blanc (Weißburgunder)
• 13% ABV alcohol
• 6.4 g/l acidity
• 1.1 g/l residual sugar

Organic control body AT-BIO-402 – Austrian Agriculture