BRUTAL!!!
Our connection to La Sorga’s Antony Tortul goes back to 2013 when he took the time to let us taste his cellar. The strict 0/0 niche still hasn’t become that big so we’ve attended many salons together, had wonderful conversations and built a connection to last. Earlier this year, at the Le Coste organized C’era Una Volta in Italy, Michael brought a bunch of samples from our cellar for a post salon late night tasting with Antony and Patrick Bouju, scouting for a wine put the new, golden BRUTAL!!! label on (if you’re not familiar with the (recent) history of BRUTAL!!! we recommend having a look at Aaron Ayscough’s article The Golden Age of Brutal!!!). With each new sample the group grew larger and a particular wine stood out as the crowd’s favorite. And after a few more months of aging Jean Louis Pinto handed over the labels and we’re proud to present our first pure Riesling, the first German BRUTAL!!
The vines are grown on the same limestone hill as the Heimat, the Fledermaus, the Weinschwärmer and the Siebenschläfer. They were planted in 2015 with Michael’s parents still involved, and even his grandmother made it up the slope to see our (at this time) little son Oskar watering the last vine planted with a bottle of wine. 2023 was a great year for Riesling. It was a dry and hot summer, with just enough summer rain to give the juice a good nutrition supply. We picked the grapes from the steepest section separately, pressed the whole bunch, and fermented the juice in a 1200l barrel, where the wine stayed until it was bottled in July. There was no maceration or temperature control – pure characteristic Riesling.