2020 Barbara Ohlzelt - Riesling Kogelberg (750ml)

Barbara Öhlzelt left a career in television and media roughly two decades ago to make wine in the village of Zöbing, in Austria's Kamptal, working with a motto of Bon Courage. She now tends around six and a half hectares by hand, refusing to bring a tractor or any heavy machinery into her vineyards. Where much of the Kamptal is known for broad, powerful wines, Öhlzelt has carved out a different reputation, favoring finesse, tension, and energy over sheer size.

Kogelberg is Öhlzelt's own favorite among her vineyards, a site on a broad spur of the high Waldviertel plateau that slopes southeast toward Zöbing. The Riesling vines here are more than sixty five years old and planted so tightly together that no machine could pass between the rows even if she wanted one to. That density leaves the soil, a mix of granite, gneiss, quartzite, and amphibolite, light, loose, and undisturbed year after year.

The resulting wine carries the tension Öhlzelt is known for, with mouthwatering acidity, restrained alcohol, and a precision that has led some tasters to mistake her Grüners and Rieslings for one another. Depth and persistence come through on a frame that stays light rather than heavy. Try it with pan fried sole, roasted asparagus, or a young, tangy pecorino.