Wenzel - 'Ruby' - Pinot Noir - Burgenland, AT - 2018

This is another special project wine, it’s a 2018 unsulphured Pinot noir late bottling. with a nice animal style label too. and a good price too. it shows a bit the warmth of the vintage, and has a bit VA, but is super charming and fun to drink. also not much around.. put a chill on it and dive deep into the loveliness that is Wenzel Wines!

Michael Wenzel has been imported by us since the very beginnings of Winemonger and no producer in our portfolio has undergone a more profound transition in his winemaking style in this time.

Even more remarkable is that Wenzel's transition was not one from good to great,- he started from great. In fact Wenzel's wines were as highly regarded then as they are now, and Michael's decision to throw out a successful model and venture off onto new and unproven terrain was certainly not an easy one. Michael had found himself at a crossroads, realizing that his somewhat traditional approach to the varieties of his region and the winemaking practices he had employed up until then, was becoming stale and boring to him. It was the autochthonous variety Furmint that had really captured Michael's imagination and interest. Almost simultaneously producers in Friuli, Styria and the Loire started to experiment with long-forgotten winemaking techniques that would soon be referred to as "natural" and later become a household name of the more adventurous crowd of wine consumers. This too had grabbed Michael's attention and he saw the potential to marry the two ideas into a new, entirely different Wenzel winery.

And so it began: using many decades of experience and employing the same attention to detail, Michael started to make wines that were a far departure from his former self. Autochthonous varieties, low sulfur, native yeast, and organic farming became the hallmarks of Wenzel's wines, while he experimented with skin contact in his line of natural wines called Wild&Free.
- Wine Monger Imports