Barbara Ohlzelt Riesling Heiligenstein Erste Lage

Barbara is based in the village of Zöbing, just north of the Kamptal’s regional centre of Langenlois. She farms 6-7ha in various small, choice locations within some of the region’s most famous ‘Erste Lagen’ vineyards. Her vineyards are typically planted very densely and are either inaccessible or unworkable by Tractors or other mechanical devices so the work is very largely by hand.

Kamptal is famous for producing some of Austria’s bigger, more robust wines and producers like Loimer, Brundlemayer and Hiedler are rightly famous for their broad, generously flavoured and full textured wines. Received wisdom says that these warm slopes above the river Kamp and the deep, predominantly Loess soils inevitably produce these rich wines. Barbera, very quietly but quite deliberately disproves the theory and is making some of the regions most clearly and cleanly delineated wines; precise, linear and excitingly intense wines that seem both scarily serious and madly joyful at the same time…. Like listening to Rik Mayall explain the meaning of life … on Jackanory !

They are deep, they are persistent, there’s a sense of everything being very deliberately … hmm… not ‘controlled’ but definitely properly ‘considered’. The acidity is always mouthwatering but stays resolutely the right side of sharp. Alcohols sit around 13.5 and there’s no shortage of flavour or ripeness and yet there’s never a hint of excess either. The wines are tense and precise but never in the slightest forbidding. You end up starting with ‘Lithe’ in the thesaurus when you run out of different ways of describing them.

Weingut Barbara Öhlzeltis certified Sustainable Austria since 2022. Sustainable Austria is a project undertaken by the Austrian Winegrowers’ Association. It assesses some 360 measures in nine sustainability fields of climate, materials, energy, soil, biodiversity, water, quality, social factors and economic factors. External auditing companies ensure independent adherence to the criteria. Each year, the requirements for earning certification become more stringent and new scientific findings are adopted.

Riesling,

This is classic Kamptal Riesling from the great Heiligenstein region. Apricot, apple, and spice lead to a tight minerally palate, stone fruits, lime and apple with a lovely fresh, clean, zippy finish. Exceptionally high quality.