Von Winning, Sauvignon Blanc I 2021

Think you know Sauvignon Blanc? Think you know Von Winning's Sauvignon Blanc? Think again and again!

This is a serious wine that happens to be made from Sauvignon Blanc!

It is a massive step-up from the Sauvignon Blanc II and is powerful, dense, layered and structured with mouth-filling mineral content and endless tropical and fresh fruit flavours.

The saline content of the soils is evident in the cleanliness of the wine and its zippy, tingly palate presence - this makes your mouth water that then allows for a wide variety of food matching. Because of the quality of the grapes, the complexity and the structure, the flavours don't stick out too much in that typical New World Sauvignon manner, which is the key for matching with food - it really is that good.

Von Winning really do believe in the potential of Sauvignon Blanc to produce excellent wines, so they have plantings all over the finest of their vineyards. This selection is from the middle of one of their most famous, the Paradiesgarten in Deidesheim.

That's premium Riesling Real Estate and the fact that they give it to Sauvignon Blanc shows their unwavering commitment to their project.

It's made with that level of care as well - fermented in neutral oak barrels and then aged for a year of its fine lees to give the extra structure, mouthfeel and complexity, the only other wine we can think of that gets treatment like this is Baron de L in Pouilly Fumé.

One of Germany’s oldest wineries, Weingut von Winning was founded in 1849 and given a new lease of life by Achim Niederberger in 2007. He brought in winemakers, Stephan Attman and Andreas Hütwohl, and well, the results speak for themselves.

We love these wines and though our favourites are certainly made from Riesling, this is a particularly charming member of the family. And that's how they roll - when a particular piece of land is better suited to a different variety, they plant it there rather than just plowing-on with regional traditions for the sake of it.

Of course, it makes commercial sense to plant internationally popular varieties, but what's compelling about their actions is that each of the wines bears a regional hallmark of Pfalz (often in the form of acidity and salinity) and each is an expression of variety seen through the lens of the vineyard or village in which they are grown.

Magic stuff.

One of Germany’s longest-running wineries, Weingut von Winning was founded in 1849 and given a new lease of life by Achim Niederberger in 2007. Bringing on board winemaker Stephan Attman and, in time, Andreas Hütwohl, the project was one of clear and brilliant simplicity: the wines from Pfalz were some of the most famous and expensive wines available in the 1850s.

• Why?
• What were they like?
• Why does no one really drink them as much any more?

The answers were fairly obvious:

1. They were amazing
2. They were amazing;
3. They became sweet and mass-produced and lost all sense of terroir and authenticity.

The "New" Von Winning then was a clear plan to resurrect old winemaking techniques using the best grapes and single vineyards available, which, as it turned out, was fairly easy because the best grapes were quite literally on their doorstep. These wines then are fermented in large wooden barrels that are 1,200 litres in capacity and oval in shape, they are a traditional German barrel called Stücke, literally 'pieces'.

These have no oak flavour impact, but allow for the Riesling, Pinot Blanc, Sauvignon or Pinot Noir grapes to be really expressive and lose the twangy metallic texture that can come from some stainless steel only fermented wines. As we've got to know them, the wines that they make from a dizzying number of different vineyard names have offered myriad views of each of the grape varieties that they use through the multi-faceted crystal of each individual wine.