Blaufränkisch village culture - Rosi Schuster - 2020

75 cl

James Suckling: 95 points

Alcohol content: 13% vol.

Grape varieties: 100% Blaufränkisch

Vinification:

Aromas of black cherries, strawberries, blackberries, spices, black tea and mineral notes on the nose. Elegant on the palate, with a silky texture, juicy acidity, full of tension and fine tannins.

Rosi Schuster Winery:

Rosi Schuster graduated from the Eisenstadt viticulture school as a winemaker's daughter, and her father Franz was a teacher of cellar management there. Perfect conditions for Hannes, who vinified his first wines in 2000 while still at school.

What Rosi Schuster began so splendidly, she and her son developed further in a perfect manner. Conversion to organic cultivation, concentration on local vines, reduction of wood influence and spontaneous fermentation with long yeast contact.

Hannes was so radical in his conversion to autochthonous grape varieties that he cleared, swapped or sold vineyards with international grape varieties. He even accepted the fact that his total area shrank. Today, Sankt Laurent and Blaufränkisch make up 75% of the production, the white wine is either Furmint or Grüner Veltliner. The winery has been certified organic since 2011. And yet Hannes Schuster is no fanatic. He knows only too well that wine is a product of nature and culture.

However, he attaches great importance to picking only ripe, healthy material. Everything is harvested by hand and treated extremely gently. No fining, no filtration, no additives such as enzymes or yeasts, no acidification or deacidification or other interventions. And he gives the wines time to mature, so that what is bottled is simply phenomenally good. When you consider that this winery is only in its second generation, you can imagine where the journey will take us.

His wines do not yet have vineyard names, but this will certainly happen sooner or later. A trend seems to be emerging in Burgenland. Christoph Wachter has been following this path recently and the results speak for themselves. If Hannes follows the call, it will be the next milestone for these marvellously perfect wines from the villages around Sankt Margarethen. They are already great.