Also tasted from cask, the 2006 Sauvignon Blanc Zieregg was 80% in fuder, with only 20% in barrique. A field of flowers and herbs opens up from the glass, and the combination of textural creaminess with clear, refreshing white currant and melon fruit and bracing herbal notes here is striking. This finishes with real concentration and grip, forceful citricity, pungency, diverse minerality, and perfumed persistence. The wine represents two weeks worth of pickings to optimize the characteristics of individual parcels as well as generate a diversity of expressions of Sauvignon fruit at different levels of potential alcohol and phenolic evolution. A small lot vinified by semi-carbonic maceration was a bit masked by wood but will probably be blended in, so I could not imagine the finished result with any precision. Based on the potential shown by Zieregg Sauvignon in a recent vertical tasting, I would expect the 2006 to be worth cellaring for 4-6 years. Tement’s expansion has not stopped at the Slovenian border, and in 2006 he acquired the neighboring holdings of the Carmelites – where his father long worked as winemaker – and since replanted their 90 year old patchwork of vine varieties to insure more Zieregg Sauvignon for the future. Tement has begun using glass stoppers on his wines in lieu of corks. Given the extent of his offerings and given that I travel to Styria only every other year, I cannot pretend to have tasted Tement’s entire 2005 and 2006 collections, but only the subset (perhaps half) that he chose to show me in the time we had available. Tement is modifying his approach with Sauvignon – especially in the top sites – having decided that lower yields and the consequent ability to harvest somewhat earlier are more advantageous (not to mention less risky) than the long hang time he has traditionally practiced with this variety.Importer: Weygandt-Metzler Importing (www.weygandtmetzler.com), Unionville, PA; tel. 610-486-0800
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