Weisser Burgunder Alte Reben Muschelkalk 2021 Weingut Kolfok

Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate
93/100 punten
From a coolish plateau at 350 meters in altitude and surrounded by a spruce forest, the 2021 Weisser Burgunder Muschelkalk Alte Reben displays a surprisingly pink-golden color we sometimes see in Pinot Gris yet rarely in the Blanc version. Here, however, the Pinot Blanc vineyard was co-planted in 1960 with some vines of a red grape variety, and Stefan Wellanschitz picks, macerates and presses the fruit of the whole small vineyard together. The juice of the hand-picked grapes doesn't fill more than a 500-liter barrel, in which the wine was fermented spontaneously and kept unfined and unsulfured until a day before bottling—with a light dose of SO2—in mid-January this year. The wine opens with a deep, intense, complex and refined nose that represents the long lees contact in oak and displays delicate, also fresh fruit with lemon, ripe yellow fruit and even red berry aromas. The lower sulfur dose is also present. On the palate, this is a full-bodied, generous, elegant and finely tannic Pinot from shell limestone soil that has only a thin layer of humus before sand aerates the soil structure until the limestone rocks take over. This gives the wine remarkable finesse and elegance but also mineral drive, tension and freshness. The oak is palatable but well integrated, and even if the wine lacks the focus and brilliant precision of the Veltliner Vulkan, it is a very fine and elegant white with features of Pinot Gris or even Pinot Noir plus a lot of intensity, texture and complexity. It would possibly be more consequential to omit the grape variety on the label since classic expectations for Pinot Blanc are not met here, but it shows more of the terroir character, which is defined by its coolish exposition, the limestone soils and the old-vines vineyard that also includes some red grapes. 13% stated alcohol. Natural cork.