Enjoy Griesel Sekt Rosé Prestige – extra brut

The Griesel Sekt Rosé Prestige Extra Brut 2020 is a limited vintage sparkling wine made from Pinot Noir. Only 3,000 bottles of it were produced. The Rosé Brut smells of red fruits such as the small Mieze Schindler strawberries, sweet and sour rhubarb and red currants, delicate orange blossoms and herbal notes are added, and soft flatbread rounds off the impressions. On the palate, it shows powerful perlage, mouth-filling, mineral with good grip, pink pearls without any sweetness, puristic but with a lot of juiciness.

In 2018, the Griesel Sekt Rosé Prestige was tasted for the first time by Stephan Reinhardt in the Wine Advocate and rated with Parker 93 points.

Sekthaus Griesel – how the Rosé Prestige is created

The grapes for this Griesel Sekt Rosé brut grow on soils of the Hessische Bergstraße, which are characterized by a high granite content, so that the vines have to dig deep into the earth. This and the cool winds from the nearby Odenwald ensure a good acid structure and minerality in the base wines.

The Pinot Noir (Spätburgunder) grapes were hand-picked in September 2020 and then pressed very gently. As in Champagne, Niko Brandner also knows the importance of gentle pressing, because the less tannins and wax from the berry skin get into the must, the finer and longer-lasting the perlage in the sparkling wine can become later. Only about 50% of the juice present in the berries is pressed. This initially produces 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 aging, which gives the sparkling wine more complexity. The Griesel Rosé is a Rosé Assemblage, which means that a part of red wine (5% Réserve perpétuelle) was added to the white-pressed Blanc de Noir during the marriage, just enough to create the delicate pink or rather copper color.

A year later, in July 2021, the Pinot is bottled without filtration and fining and given the tirage to trigger the second fermentation in the bottle. The dosage was 2g/l. Acidity 7.2g/l. Now it is allowed to rest and mature for another 34 months on the fine lees in the cellar built in 1904, it is regularly riddled and the bottles are more and more turned upside down, until at the very end during disgorgement (June 2024) the yeast plug is removed from the bottle and the Griesel Sekt Rosé Prestige finally goes on sale.

Sparkling wine with time and enjoyment

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 fine yeast dough, in the sparkling wine Griesel Sekt Prestige.