Maria & Sepp Muster - Graf Sauvignon 2021
We are drinking a bottle of 2021 Sauvignon from the Styria region by Maria and Sepp Muster.
There are these wines that you come across again and again, each time thinking you really should take the time for a bottle, and then somehow you keep forgetting to do it. For me, the wines of Maria and Sepp Muster had belonged in that category until now. It’s easy to assume that the wine just didn’t make a deep enough impression, but the reality is simply that I forget things. The wine itself is not to blame. What helps, at least for me, is recognizability. And with the seemingly two-tone labels, that recognizability is more than present. Even from across a large room, you immediately think, “Ah, Muster”. And that’s pretty much the thought when the bottle is right in front of me on the table too.
What immediately draws you in, even from a distance, are the images by Beppo Pliem. Reduced horizons, a focus on what seemed essential to him. And this reduction to the essentials is also the foundation of the philosophy behind the wines of Maria and Sepp Muster. The two took over the family estate in Southern Styria in 2001 and converted the roughly 10 hectares directly to biodynamic cultivation. The estate has always been called Graf, so it made sense to name one of their wine lines Graf. In the quality pyramid, it sits in the middle, between the wines from Opok below and the Sgaminegg above, the grapes grow at altitudes right between these two other lines. The Graf vines also grow on Opok, which we would call calcareous marl round here. The vines are trained in a special way on wooden stakes and a single wire at a height of 1.8 meters. Fermentation is, of course, spontaneous, and intervention in the cellar is kept to an absolute minimum. The Sauvignon then spends two years in large, used barrels before it is bottled without filtering or fining.
If the bottle only said Graf and not Sauvignon, I don’t know what grape variety I would guess. Certainly not Sauvignon Blanc, that much is clear. There’s a lot of eucalyptus, spice, herbs, some popcorn, and a hint of gunflint reduction in the background. The wine has real drive on the palate, a lot of citrus fruit, almost a bit sharp in acidity, and again, lots of herbs. It comes across as very youthful, not unfinished, but still very much at the beginning and certainly more unruly than it’s bound to become. There’s plenty of structure and juiciness at the same time, intensity, density, and length. It’s actually quite a lot, and I’m curious where the journey will lead.
The flinty reduction doesn’t disappear overnight. It was so far in the background on the first night that I was sure it would withdraw completely. Wrong. All in all, everything remains surprisingly stable in its aromatics. A bit less eucalyptus, a touch more kernel character, a bit more structure, but overall pretty unchanged. My better half, when she sniffs past the herbs, says there’s an ice candy way in the back. And once you have that in your head, you can smell it too. But it’s so little that it hardly stands out, and you really have to pay close attention. Only the sense of where the wine might develop is completely missing due to this aromatic stability. This creates a bit of a dilemma because as juicy as the Sauvignon is in the mouth, it’s just as hard to put a leftover back in the fridge.
The third night doesn’t make me much wiser either. No reduction anymore, not unexpected at this point. Even spicier, but also fruitier, with more citrus. More on the palate than on the nose. It’s reminiscent of freshly pressed lime juice, with a bit of orange, and still sits nowhere near where I’d usually place Sauvignon Blanc. No green bell pepper, not even a hint of passion fruit or gooseberries. I’m at a loss. But maybe I just have the wrong image of Sauvignon Blanc. Maybe this is exactly what remains when you reduce Sauvignon Blanc to its essentials. Or maybe my own horizons aren’t wide enough to capture all the images of Sauvignon Blanc. In any case, I like the wine best on this third night. At least that should be a good indication of its further development. The juicy acidity, the gentle tannin structure, this herbal, citrusy nose, it’s really, really good. No matter where I’d blindly place it.