Griesel – Rosé Prestige 2019 – Sekt Extra Brut

The Griesel Sekt Rosé Prestige Extra Brut 2019 is a limited vintage sparkling wine made from Pinot Noir. Only 4,290 bottles were filled. The Rosé Brut offers aromas of red fruits like small Mieze Schindler strawberries, sweet and sour rhubarb, and red currants, with delicate orange blossom and herbal notes, rounded off by soft flatbread. On the palate, it presents a powerful, mouth-filling, mineral effervescence with good grip, pink pearls with no sweetness whatsoever, puristic but with plenty of juiciness.

This Griesel Sekt was tasted for the first time by Stephan Reinhardt in Wine Advocate and awarded 93 Parker points.

Sekthaus Griesel – how Rosé Prestige is made

The grapes for this Griesel Sekt Rosé Brut grow on soils of the Hessische Bergstraße, which are characterized by a high granite content, forcing the vines to root deep into the earth. This, combined with cool winds from the nearby Odenwald, ensures a good acid structure and minerality in the base wines.

The Pinot Noir (Spätburgunder) grapes were hand-picked in September 2019 and then pressed very gently. As in Champagne, Niko Brandner also understands the importance of gentle pressing, because the less tannins and wax from the berry skins get into the must, the finer and longer-lasting the perlage in the sparkling wine will be later. Only about 50% of the juice present in the berries is pressed off. This first creates a white wine from red grape varieties, a Blanc de Noir.

In the cellar, Niko Brandner gives things time, so the grapes are allowed to ferment spontaneously and undergo malolactic fermentation, in which the malic acid in the wine is converted into the milder lactic acid, which gives the wine a special mouthfeel and creaminess. Cellar master Brandner combines large and small stainless steel (38%) and wooden (62%) barrels for maturation, which gives the sparkling wine more complexity. The Griesel Rosé is a Rosé Assemblage, meaning that a portion of red wine (5% Réserve perpétuelle) was added to the white-pressed Blanc de Noir during blending, just enough to create the delicate pink or rather copper color.

One year later, in July 2020, the Pinot is bottled without filtration or fining and tirage is added to initiate the second fermentation in the bottle. The dosage was 2g/l. Acidity 7.2g/l. It then rests and matures for another 34 months on its fine lees in the cellar built in 1904, undergoing regular riddling and inversion of the bottles until the yeast plug is finally removed from the bottle during disgorgement (June 2023) and the Griesel Sekt Rosé Prestige finally goes on sale.

Sparkling wine with time and pleasure

A Griesel Sekt of the Prestige classification is produced using traditional bottle fermentation. After bottling the base wine, it matures for at least 34 months on the lees and undergoes the second fermentation, the conversion of wine to sparkling wine. The long yeast contact ensures a fine perlage and notes of brioche, of delicate yeast dough, in the sparkling wine Griesel Sekt Prestige.