Michael Wenzel

Vogelsang 2018

A wine that literally allows you to drink a piece of history. Vogelsang was the first vineyard to reintroduce Furmint to Austria in the 1980s after its disappearance almost 100 years earlier. For Michael the blue quartz soil gives the wine its unique character. The wine combines the elegance and salinity you might expect from Premier Cru Chablis but with acidity that may well rival some of the world’s best Mosel Rieslings.

From Austria`s oldest plantation of Furmint, planted in the 1980s, the Vogelsang vineyard is located in the surroundings of Rust in Burgenland.The soil is a conglomerate of mica schist, grey and blue quartz. Grapes are harvested at the peak of harvest, gently pressed on whole bunches and then transferred into large Austrian oak for 12 months.

 

DETAILS ABOUT THE WINE:

Winemaker: Michael Wenzel

Farming: Organic

Region: Burgenland, Austria

Vintage: 2018

Grapes: Furmint

Colour: White

ABV:

Size: 75 cL

£48.00

Behind the Bottle

Michael Wenzel

Furmint and Austria would not be the same without the story of the Wenzel family. Based in Rust, a (former) stronghold of world- famous sweet wines, Michael Wenzel’s grandfather and father believed in this grape so much that they secretly smuggled back historic clones from Hungary in times of the Iron Curtain and Cold War, risking getting caught (with severe consequences). But when they arrived back to the Hungarian-Austrian border, Wenzel senior would pull out his clarinet, playing old Hungarian folk music which was forbidden back in the communist time ...