Pinot Noir Prestige Brut Nature – 2020

Pinot Noir Prestige Brut Nature from Griesel Sekt: spicy and vibrant

The 2020 Pinot Noir Prestige Brut Nature from Griesel Sekt is a pale vintage sparkling wine made from dark Pinot Noir, aged for thirty-four months on the fine lees. It was bottled without a single gram of dosage, and there are 3,000 bottles from this harvest available in the cellar.

Pinot Noir Prestige Brut Nature 2020 is the Blanc de Noirs from the Prestige line by Griesel Sekt in Bensheim, in the Hessische Bergstraße region. The grapes were harvested in September 2020, and it was released to the market as a Brut Nature. Where other houses blend multiple vintages together, here you have a single autumn in the glass.

Pear chutney and juniper over warm lye bread

Ripe red apple and cooked-down pear chutney lead the way, followed by rosemary and juniper. Warm lye bread with a hint of smoked bacon rounds it all out.

The mousse is vibrant and fills the mouth without ever becoming coarse, and the spice lingers long after the final sip. Because there is no dosage to soften it, the fruit remains unadorned, and the sparkling wine retains that tension until the end, which makes it complex rather than merely pleasing.

Guinea fowl and smoked mackerel find a match here, as does baked celery with brown butter. Its own spice stands up well even to strongly seasoned dishes, and because it lacks a cushion of sweetness, it tastes fresh until the end of the meal.

A single autumn without a safety net

In the world of sparkling wine, blending multiple vintages is permitted, and in Champagne it is the standard procedure because it balances out the variations between harvests. Griesel Sekt eschews this and bottles each vintage individually.

The Pinot Noir grapes grew on granite at the Bergstraße, which yields so little that the roots have to search deep for water, while cool air from the nearby Odenwald keeps the acidity alive. They were harvested by hand in September 2020, and during pressing, about half of the juice remains in the skins.

Anything further would release tannins and wax from the berry skins and make the mousse coarser later on. The base wines ferment spontaneously, followed by malolactic fermentation in barrels. This transforms the sharp malic acid into milder lactic acid. Two-fifths of the wine then remains in stainless steel, while the rest is divided between small barriques and larger tonneaux.

Bottled without dosage and without sulfur

It went into the bottle in July 2021, unfined and unfiltered, accompanied by the liqueur de tirage to initiate the second fermentation. Thirty-four months of aging on fine lees followed, during which the bottles were regularly riddled.

When disgorging, the yeast plug is removed, and this is where most houses reach for dosage and sulfur. Here, both remain on the shelf. Anyone who can forgo these after such a long period of aging on the lees has a base wine with nothing to hide, as the lees themselves protected the sparkling wine during the years prior.

With 7.2 grams of acidity per liter, there is a structure behind it that keeps it upright, and Stephan Reinhardt awarded it 92+ points in the Wine Advocate. A portion of the same bottling remained in the cellar longer as a late-release batch. From the previous autumn, the Pinot Noir Prestige 2019 is available, and further bottle-fermented wines can be found among our sparkling wines.