Neumeister ‘Straden’ Sauvignon Blanc 2022
Location: Austria, Steiermark, Vulkanland Steiermark
Winemaker: Christoph Neumeister
Grapes: Sauvignon Blanc
Soil: volcanic basalt, sandy loam, chalky limestone, and sandstone
Winemaking: Fermented naturally after a two-day maceration on the skins, it spends the better part of a year on its fine lees in used oak casks between 500 and 2500 liters in capacity.
From the Importer Rosenthal: Named after the Neumeister’s hometown of Straden, Sauvignon Blanc Straden is an Ortswein (village wine) and exemplifies Christoph’s texturally expansive yet intricately chiseled style of Sauvignon Blanc. Expressive in its youth but capable of significant positive development in bottle (like all of Christoph’s white wines), this has an emerald-green cast (not to be confused with under-ripeness) to its aromas and flavors, with a texture simultaneously airy and concentrated.
Styria is a winegrowing region of extremes. Bordered by Slovenia to the south, it occupies the southeast corner of Austria, with its eastern edge flanking the Burgenland’s western edge along its entire length. Styria, or Steiermark in German, divides into three winegrowing areas: Südsteiermark (South Styria); Weststeiermark (West Styria), or Schilcherland; and Vulkanland Steiermark, Styria’s largest winegrowing subregion, named after the slopes of the extinct volcanoes (Vulkane) on which many of its vineyards are planted. Although its surface area is close to that of the larger Niederösterreich (Lower Austria) to the north, Styria comprises just ten percent of all Austrian wine by volume, as vineyards here tend to dot rather than blanket the landscape.
In the southeast corner of Vulkanland Steiermark, close to where Slovenia’s northwest corner meets Hungary’s southwest corner, third-generation winegrower Christoph Neumeister farms 30 hectares of vines spread over numerous steep hillsides around his hometown of Straden, planted at altitudes of 340 to 380 meters above sea level. Soils here are diverse, with volcanic basalt, sandy loam, chalky limestone, and sandstone all influencing the characteristics of the grapes grown on these slopes, most of which exceed 65% in gradient. Vulkanland Steiermark’s climate is mercurial and difficult: cool winds from the Alps clash with warm breezes from the Adriatic Sea to the south and Hungary’s Pannonian plains to the east, bringing lots of rainfall and frequent hailstorms; and the zone’s extremely cold nights—diurnal shifts regularly exceed 20 degrees Celsius during summer—make for a lengthy growing season.
Between the area’s steep slopes, extreme weather conditions, and relatively small share of Austria’s winegrowing spotlight, producing wine here is neither easy nor glorious; however, much like in the Carso, the growers who do tough it out are necessarily deeply committed. Neumeister is one of a dozen wineries in the STK (for “Steiermark”) organization, a tight-knit grower collective that engages in landscape preservation, prioritizes biodiversity, and promotes a sustainable, integrated approach to farming, energy usage, resource management, and social issues. STK also employs an internally developed and rigorous classification system, designating certain wines from certain prized vineyards “Erste STK Ried” (or “1STK”—premier cru) and “Grosse STK Ried” (or “GSTK”—grand cru), provided they meet certain mutually agreed-upon requirements for vine age, farming technique, yields, must weight, dryness, and aging process.
Thoughtful, meticulous, and articulate, Christoph Neumeister took over from his father Albert in 2006, when he was just 25 years old, obtaining certification in 2013 for the organic viticultural practices Albert had begun employing in the 1990s. Vulkanland Steiermark’s extreme inclines make machine work next to impossible, so not only is harvest conducted manually, but all tasks in the vineyards are completed by hand. The Neumeister cellar was designed top-to-bottom to treat fruit, must, and wine as gently and naturally as possible: all wines ferment spontaneously, and everything is moved solely by gravity from harvest through bottling. Christoph favors well-used oak in the aging of his wines, which allows the mineral potency and textural splendor inherent in his low-yield-derived fruit to blossom over the wines’ lengthy stints in cask; such transformations are impossible with a curt passage in highly thermoregulated stainless steel.
Christoph owns well-situated parcels of multiple grape varieties, including Weissburgunder (Pinot Blanc), Grauburgunder (Pinot Gris), and Morillon (Chardonnay), but it is Sauvignon Blanc—brought to Styria in the early 1800s by Archduke Johann of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine—that produces arguably the region’s most distinctive and complex wines. Christoph’s Sauvignon Blanc is a far cry from most of those produced in the eastern Loire Valley in which the variety was born. While pockets of great terroir exist in appellations like Sancerre and Pouilly-Fumé, of course, many of its wines are cropped for high production, harvested by machine, inoculated with intrusive artificial yeasts, and crammed into bottle after only a few months in stainless steel—relying on name recognition to do the heavy lifting in the market. Christoph’s yields, on the other hand, rarely top 35 hectoliters per hectare; hand-harvesting ensures that only perfect and intact fruit enters the winery; and patient aging allows his Sauvignon Blanc to assume a breadth and texture experienced in very few examples from elsewhere.
One senses the very pulp of the fruit in Neumeister’s Sauvignon Blanc—an impression fostered by a 12-to-48-hour maceration on the skins before fermentation begins—and the zone’s dramatic diurnal swings manifest in a shimmering, prismatic acidity that seems to illuminate the wine’s manifold layers. The wines show salt, or smoke, or both, as dictated by soil, and they simultaneously caress the palate and cling to it, their immense concentration reflecting their low-yielding fruit of origin. These are wines of terroir par excellence, and we are confident they will prove riveting and revelatory to even the staunchest Sauvignon Blanc skeptic.
Location: Austria, Steiermark, Vulkanland Steiermark
Winemaker: Christoph Neumeister
Grapes: Sauvignon Blanc
Soil: volcanic basalt, sandy loam, chalky limestone, and sandstone
Winemaking: Fermented naturally after a two-day maceration on the skins, it spends the better part of a year on its fine lees in used oak casks between 500 and 2500 liters in capacity.
From the Importer Rosenthal: Named after the Neumeister’s hometown of Straden, Sauvignon Blanc Straden is an Ortswein (village wine) and exemplifies Christoph’s texturally expansive yet intricately chiseled style of Sauvignon Blanc. Expressive in its youth but capable of significant positive development in bottle (like all of Christoph’s white wines), this has an emerald-green cast (not to be confused with under-ripeness) to its aromas and flavors, with a texture simultaneously airy and concentrated.
Styria is a winegrowing region of extremes. Bordered by Slovenia to the south, it occupies the southeast corner of Austria, with its eastern edge flanking the Burgenland’s western edge along its entire length. Styria, or Steiermark in German, divides into three winegrowing areas: Südsteiermark (South Styria); Weststeiermark (West Styria), or Schilcherland; and Vulkanland Steiermark, Styria’s largest winegrowing subregion, named after the slopes of the extinct volcanoes (Vulkane) on which many of its vineyards are planted. Although its surface area is close to that of the larger Niederösterreich (Lower Austria) to the north, Styria comprises just ten percent of all Austrian wine by volume, as vineyards here tend to dot rather than blanket the landscape.
In the southeast corner of Vulkanland Steiermark, close to where Slovenia’s northwest corner meets Hungary’s southwest corner, third-generation winegrower Christoph Neumeister farms 30 hectares of vines spread over numerous steep hillsides around his hometown of Straden, planted at altitudes of 340 to 380 meters above sea level. Soils here are diverse, with volcanic basalt, sandy loam, chalky limestone, and sandstone all influencing the characteristics of the grapes grown on these slopes, most of which exceed 65% in gradient. Vulkanland Steiermark’s climate is mercurial and difficult: cool winds from the Alps clash with warm breezes from the Adriatic Sea to the south and Hungary’s Pannonian plains to the east, bringing lots of rainfall and frequent hailstorms; and the zone’s extremely cold nights—diurnal shifts regularly exceed 20 degrees Celsius during summer—make for a lengthy growing season.
Between the area’s steep slopes, extreme weather conditions, and relatively small share of Austria’s winegrowing spotlight, producing wine here is neither easy nor glorious; however, much like in the Carso, the growers who do tough it out are necessarily deeply committed. Neumeister is one of a dozen wineries in the STK (for “Steiermark”) organization, a tight-knit grower collective that engages in landscape preservation, prioritizes biodiversity, and promotes a sustainable, integrated approach to farming, energy usage, resource management, and social issues. STK also employs an internally developed and rigorous classification system, designating certain wines from certain prized vineyards “Erste STK Ried” (or “1STK”—premier cru) and “Grosse STK Ried” (or “GSTK”—grand cru), provided they meet certain mutually agreed-upon requirements for vine age, farming technique, yields, must weight, dryness, and aging process.
Thoughtful, meticulous, and articulate, Christoph Neumeister took over from his father Albert in 2006, when he was just 25 years old, obtaining certification in 2013 for the organic viticultural practices Albert had begun employing in the 1990s. Vulkanland Steiermark’s extreme inclines make machine work next to impossible, so not only is harvest conducted manually, but all tasks in the vineyards are completed by hand. The Neumeister cellar was designed top-to-bottom to treat fruit, must, and wine as gently and naturally as possible: all wines ferment spontaneously, and everything is moved solely by gravity from harvest through bottling. Christoph favors well-used oak in the aging of his wines, which allows the mineral potency and textural splendor inherent in his low-yield-derived fruit to blossom over the wines’ lengthy stints in cask; such transformations are impossible with a curt passage in highly thermoregulated stainless steel.
Christoph owns well-situated parcels of multiple grape varieties, including Weissburgunder (Pinot Blanc), Grauburgunder (Pinot Gris), and Morillon (Chardonnay), but it is Sauvignon Blanc—brought to Styria in the early 1800s by Archduke Johann of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine—that produces arguably the region’s most distinctive and complex wines. Christoph’s Sauvignon Blanc is a far cry from most of those produced in the eastern Loire Valley in which the variety was born. While pockets of great terroir exist in appellations like Sancerre and Pouilly-Fumé, of course, many of its wines are cropped for high production, harvested by machine, inoculated with intrusive artificial yeasts, and crammed into bottle after only a few months in stainless steel—relying on name recognition to do the heavy lifting in the market. Christoph’s yields, on the other hand, rarely top 35 hectoliters per hectare; hand-harvesting ensures that only perfect and intact fruit enters the winery; and patient aging allows his Sauvignon Blanc to assume a breadth and texture experienced in very few examples from elsewhere.
One senses the very pulp of the fruit in Neumeister’s Sauvignon Blanc—an impression fostered by a 12-to-48-hour maceration on the skins before fermentation begins—and the zone’s dramatic diurnal swings manifest in a shimmering, prismatic acidity that seems to illuminate the wine’s manifold layers. The wines show salt, or smoke, or both, as dictated by soil, and they simultaneously caress the palate and cling to it, their immense concentration reflecting their low-yielding fruit of origin. These are wines of terroir par excellence, and we are confident they will prove riveting and revelatory to even the staunchest Sauvignon Blanc skeptic.
Location: Austria, Steiermark, Vulkanland Steiermark
Winemaker: Christoph Neumeister
Grapes: Sauvignon Blanc
Soil: volcanic basalt, sandy loam, chalky limestone, and sandstone
Winemaking: Fermented naturally after a two-day maceration on the skins, it spends the better part of a year on its fine lees in used oak casks between 500 and 2500 liters in capacity.
From the Importer Rosenthal: Named after the Neumeister’s hometown of Straden, Sauvignon Blanc Straden is an Ortswein (village wine) and exemplifies Christoph’s texturally expansive yet intricately chiseled style of Sauvignon Blanc. Expressive in its youth but capable of significant positive development in bottle (like all of Christoph’s white wines), this has an emerald-green cast (not to be confused with under-ripeness) to its aromas and flavors, with a texture simultaneously airy and concentrated.
Styria is a winegrowing region of extremes. Bordered by Slovenia to the south, it occupies the southeast corner of Austria, with its eastern edge flanking the Burgenland’s western edge along its entire length. Styria, or Steiermark in German, divides into three winegrowing areas: Südsteiermark (South Styria); Weststeiermark (West Styria), or Schilcherland; and Vulkanland Steiermark, Styria’s largest winegrowing subregion, named after the slopes of the extinct volcanoes (Vulkane) on which many of its vineyards are planted. Although its surface area is close to that of the larger Niederösterreich (Lower Austria) to the north, Styria comprises just ten percent of all Austrian wine by volume, as vineyards here tend to dot rather than blanket the landscape.
In the southeast corner of Vulkanland Steiermark, close to where Slovenia’s northwest corner meets Hungary’s southwest corner, third-generation winegrower Christoph Neumeister farms 30 hectares of vines spread over numerous steep hillsides around his hometown of Straden, planted at altitudes of 340 to 380 meters above sea level. Soils here are diverse, with volcanic basalt, sandy loam, chalky limestone, and sandstone all influencing the characteristics of the grapes grown on these slopes, most of which exceed 65% in gradient. Vulkanland Steiermark’s climate is mercurial and difficult: cool winds from the Alps clash with warm breezes from the Adriatic Sea to the south and Hungary’s Pannonian plains to the east, bringing lots of rainfall and frequent hailstorms; and the zone’s extremely cold nights—diurnal shifts regularly exceed 20 degrees Celsius during summer—make for a lengthy growing season.
Between the area’s steep slopes, extreme weather conditions, and relatively small share of Austria’s winegrowing spotlight, producing wine here is neither easy nor glorious; however, much like in the Carso, the growers who do tough it out are necessarily deeply committed. Neumeister is one of a dozen wineries in the STK (for “Steiermark”) organization, a tight-knit grower collective that engages in landscape preservation, prioritizes biodiversity, and promotes a sustainable, integrated approach to farming, energy usage, resource management, and social issues. STK also employs an internally developed and rigorous classification system, designating certain wines from certain prized vineyards “Erste STK Ried” (or “1STK”—premier cru) and “Grosse STK Ried” (or “GSTK”—grand cru), provided they meet certain mutually agreed-upon requirements for vine age, farming technique, yields, must weight, dryness, and aging process.
Thoughtful, meticulous, and articulate, Christoph Neumeister took over from his father Albert in 2006, when he was just 25 years old, obtaining certification in 2013 for the organic viticultural practices Albert had begun employing in the 1990s. Vulkanland Steiermark’s extreme inclines make machine work next to impossible, so not only is harvest conducted manually, but all tasks in the vineyards are completed by hand. The Neumeister cellar was designed top-to-bottom to treat fruit, must, and wine as gently and naturally as possible: all wines ferment spontaneously, and everything is moved solely by gravity from harvest through bottling. Christoph favors well-used oak in the aging of his wines, which allows the mineral potency and textural splendor inherent in his low-yield-derived fruit to blossom over the wines’ lengthy stints in cask; such transformations are impossible with a curt passage in highly thermoregulated stainless steel.
Christoph owns well-situated parcels of multiple grape varieties, including Weissburgunder (Pinot Blanc), Grauburgunder (Pinot Gris), and Morillon (Chardonnay), but it is Sauvignon Blanc—brought to Styria in the early 1800s by Archduke Johann of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine—that produces arguably the region’s most distinctive and complex wines. Christoph’s Sauvignon Blanc is a far cry from most of those produced in the eastern Loire Valley in which the variety was born. While pockets of great terroir exist in appellations like Sancerre and Pouilly-Fumé, of course, many of its wines are cropped for high production, harvested by machine, inoculated with intrusive artificial yeasts, and crammed into bottle after only a few months in stainless steel—relying on name recognition to do the heavy lifting in the market. Christoph’s yields, on the other hand, rarely top 35 hectoliters per hectare; hand-harvesting ensures that only perfect and intact fruit enters the winery; and patient aging allows his Sauvignon Blanc to assume a breadth and texture experienced in very few examples from elsewhere.
One senses the very pulp of the fruit in Neumeister’s Sauvignon Blanc—an impression fostered by a 12-to-48-hour maceration on the skins before fermentation begins—and the zone’s dramatic diurnal swings manifest in a shimmering, prismatic acidity that seems to illuminate the wine’s manifold layers. The wines show salt, or smoke, or both, as dictated by soil, and they simultaneously caress the palate and cling to it, their immense concentration reflecting their low-yielding fruit of origin. These are wines of terroir par excellence, and we are confident they will prove riveting and revelatory to even the staunchest Sauvignon Blanc skeptic.