Blaufränkisch – Saybritz – 2017

Single-Vineyard Blaufränkisch Sybritz from Wachter-Wiesler

The Wachter-Wiesler Blaufränkisch Saybritz 2017 Eisenberg DAC Reserve is an organic red wine from the Saybritz vineyard in southern Burgenland, Austria. This single-vineyard red wine made from Blaufränkisch grapes impressively showcases its unique terroir: the Eisenberg. Around the Eisenberg, with its iron-rich soils, a variety of rock formations and soil compositions can be found in a very small area: oxidized green schist, quartz phyllite, calcareous schist, or serpentinite. This red wine from a region declared a DAC (Districtus Austriae Controllatus) for typical wines only in 2010, is independent, mineral-spicy, cool, precise with vibrant acidity, and a feminine tannin structure.

On the nose, the garnet-red Blaufränkisch exudes dark berry fruits, night-black blackberries, cassis, tart sloe, meeting a piquant herbal spice, with forest floor and fermented pepper added. On the palate, the single-vineyard wine is juicy, with cool minerality, vibrantly delicate yet well-structured, salty on the finish. The Wachter Wiesler Blaufränkisch Saybritz is a red wine of quiet grandeur with immense aging potential, if one can only muster the necessary patience.

With great talent and careful intuition, the winemaker succeeds in creating a red wine of the finest caliber, a magnificent ambassador of its extraordinary terroir, which demonstrates the great passion of Wachter-Wiesler for their soils and their Blaufränkisch grape variety, and which is characterized more by finesse and complexity than by opulence. A wine with great aging potential, to which one can completely surrender.

"Christoph Wachter has catapulted the family business among the best Blaufränkisch producers in Austria within a very short time. He currently cultivates the most daring, edgy, purist style around the Eisenberg," Sascha Speicher describes his impressions of the Wachter Wiesler wines from the magical Eisenberg.

Saybritz Eisenberg DAC Reserve – Winemaking

A single-vineyard Blaufränkisch like the Saybritz represents the pinnacle of the Wachter-Wiesler winery. Single-vineyard wines from old vines, deeply rooted in the very special (not to say: unparalleled) soil structures of the Eisenberg. Lowest Intervention Wines with guaranteed maturity and enormous development potential, intended to be companions for decades. Great wines that grow and constantly evolve in all their facets year after year, and belong to the great regional red wines of Austria.

The steep vineyards for this wine are located on the upper Eisenberg and are oriented south-southeast. The deep-rooted, partly 40-60-year-old vines grow protected from the weather by the forest on ancient green schist from the Penninicum, covered with humic loam. The parent material of the soil is approx. 10 million years old. The vineyards are pampered by the sun, stony and partly very steep, and are shaped by the Pannonian-Illyrian climate in addition to the special soils. Christoph Wachter cultivates the vineyards of the Wachter Wiesler winery organically and with great manual effort and care. The Blaufränkisch grapes, hand-picked from mid-September to mid-October 2017, remain on the mash in wooden fermenters for 24 days, ferment spontaneously with natural vineyard yeasts, and are then gently pressed. Afterwards, they undergo malolactic fermentation and mature for 22 months in traditional, large wooden barrels (2000l). Bottled unfined and unfiltered in summer 2020.

Blaufränkisch – a wine and its values

• Origin Wine from Austria
• Growing region Burgenland
• Vineyard Saybritz
• Eisenberg DAC Reserve
• Grape variety Blaufränkisch
• 13% Vol. Alcohol
• 5.8 g/l Acidity
• 1.0 g/l Residual sugar

Organic inspection body AT-BIO-402 – Austrian Agriculture