Köstlicher, vielfältiger Duft nach schwarzen Johannisbeeren und reifen Stachelbeeren. Würzige Fruchtaromen und Fruchtsüße, sehr kompakt, sehr elegant, feine Holztöne, sehr lang nachklingend.
Stephan Reinhardt am 31.Oktober 2019:
Bottled in late April 2019, the 2017 Ried Zieregg Sauvignon Blanc offers a deep and coolish, spicy, flinty and herbal, very intense but well-defined and elegant bouquet with interwoven fruit, juniper and stony aromas. Terribly deep and spicy, full-bodied and powerful, with great purity, lingering salinity and mineral tension, this is a dense and powerful, tightly knit and concentrated, phenolic, structured Ziergegg with great aging potential. Tasted in May 2019.
It's almost redundant to say, but in the 60th year of existence, Weingut Tement offers another stellar range of wines. It is composed of the new 2018 generic and village wines and the single-vineyard "crus" from the exceptional 2017 vintage. As always, this lineup was completed by some matured wines and late releases (the more-matured wines will be published a week later) as well as the Slovenian wines from the other part of the Zieregg, since the green border runs without any wall straight through the center of the prestigious cru. Since the reputation of Domine Ciringa is not as high as Tement's, the prices are still very reasonable and the quality is pure Tement. I am possibly repeating myself in saying that Armin Tement (supported by brother Stefan and his wife Monika as well as his parents Manfred and Heidi) has made Weingut Tement to Austria's number one wine producer. Although it has been lead to one of the countries finest wine addresses already during the 1990s and 2000s by Armin’s father Manfred, the son has pushed the borders even further. In terms of size, sophisticated winemaking and the immense range of high-quality wines, I don’t see anybody else producing wine on this level in Austria, and even in other German-speaking countries, there is perhaps only Markus Molitor from the Mosel on those heights. Armin Tement manages to produce great wines even in problematic vintages such as 2016 and also from less highly regarded grape varieties such as Welschriesling. Even Pinot Noir is shining brightly here like perhaps nowhere else in Austria. Readers can look forward to a Pinot vertical that I am lucky enough to be invited to next year. Although the wines were already collected for me this year, I didn’t find the time to add them too. Tement is producing so many wines that it would take me another day to get this done. Back to what we have here. Most of all Sauvignon Blancs, of course, as always, but also exciting Pinot Blanc and Morillon, a.k.a. Chardonnay. Tement’s beautiful 2018s, and namely the phenomenal 2017 grands crus, should be mentioned among the world’s finest white wines. Put the IZ (when matured) or the Zieregg in any blind tasting of true wine lovers with passion for terroir wines to learn about the sublime class and style of Tement’s wines. These are predominantly driven by Muschelkalk (shell limestone), which gives them an unrivaled complexity, structure and finesse. However, Armin sees himself still being on the road to even more finesse and terroir expression, and each time we taste the vintage range together, he tells me what he has improved in the previous year and what he is going to change in the coming year. The future will tell us whether 2015 or 2017 has been the greater outstanding vintage, though I tend to go for the more elegant and finessed 2017s. The mind-blowing 2015 IZ, though, has the potential to score the full 100 points one day, and also, among the 2017 Zieregg single-plot selections (the first since the 2015 premier releases), hardcore terroir freaks can find Sauvignons that set a new level for wines from this grape variety.
