2020 Barbara Ohlzelt - Riesling Kogelberg

One of Austria's most exciting and under-the-radar voices in fine Riesling — and the Kogelberg is her most personal and prized expression. Ask Barbara Öhlzelt what her favorite site is and she will tell you without hesitation: the Kogelberg, where her 65-year-old Riesling vines are a marvel. The heart of Barbara's estate, the Kogelberg is a single vineyard on a broad spur of the high Waldviertel plateau sloping southeast toward the village of Zöbing, planted so narrowly that no tractors or machines can be used — as a result the soil remains light, loose, and beautifully uncompacted, over a complex bedrock of metamorphic granite, gneiss, quartzite, and amphibolite.  

Barbara Öhlzelt has been making wine in the village of Zöbing in Austria's Kamptal since 2004, farming along organic principles from just 6.5 hectares — never using chemical treatments in the vineyard — with a style that emphasizes finesse and elegance over power and density. Critics and sommeliers who taste her wines blind have been known to wonder whether the Grüner Veltliners are actually Rieslings — they are fine, precisely-etched, clearly delineated wines with just as much depth and persistence as the famous large Kamptal estates, but on a lighter, more refreshing frame — racy wines of purity and energy that are exactly what the next chapter in Austrian wine should be. The Kogelberg Riesling is pale gold and luminous, with a nose of crushed stone, white peach, lemon curd, and delicate herbs, leading to a taut, crystalline palate of mouthwatering acidity, saline minerality, and a finish of extraordinary precision and length. A wine for the curious and the adventurous — and one of the Kamptal's most thrilling discoveries