Zehnthof Luckert - Silvaner Maustal 2015
We drink a bottle of Silvaner Maustal GG from 2015 from Zehnthof Luckert.
After we have already had one or two Silvaner wines here, from Natural to Erste Lage, it is time to try out the top of the VDP quality pyramid. Normally, apart from auction and icon wines and other special cases, this means Großes Gewächs. This time, the grapes were grown with a view of the Main River in the steep slope vineyard Maustal south of Sulzfeld am Main. There, on Franconian shell limestone, the Zehnthof Luckert winery cultivates the over 50-year-old vines organically. And this naturally continues in the cellar. The grapes are fermented spontaneously and then matured in double barrels after a maceration period. The wine is from 2015 and therefore already has a few years under its belt.
You can smell that immediately after opening the bottle. There is light mango in the nose, rather dark yellow and with tart spice. The mango is also found on the tongue, but much more discreetly than the nose suggested. There is minerality and above all a lot of freshness. The 14 percent alcohol are so well integrated that they are not really noticeable. The acidity is great and this hint of bottle maturity in the nose is not noticeable at all on the tongue. The wine is dense and long. With a little air, the nose becomes calmer, more discreet, the dark yellow fruit retreats and everything becomes spicier and spicier. With every minute, the aroma gains structure and at the same time seems more sparse and somehow more focused. What smelled like maturity in the bottle at the beginning has now completely disappeared. There is now coolness, a bit of wet stone, yellow fruit and a hint of bacon.
The obligatory night in the fridge gives the wine a new lease of life. Suddenly there is much more fruit, no longer just mango, but honeydew melon, lychee, a whole basket of tropical fruits. Discreet, elegant, doesn’t jump out at you. The minerality is super fine, the acidity fresh, there is papaya, pineapple, more and more complex. The sparseness now gives way to this very fine fruit. The balance between fruit, minerality, structure and acidity is always on point. Beautiful and quite unexpected. This development was not at all foreshadowed on the first evening and is all the more exciting for it. Great Silvaner.