Austrian Riesling

Along with the pork roast a couple of posts below this one there had to be wine and we went in a slightly different direction for one.  We opened an Austrian riesling.    Normally I buy Gruner Veltliner when I buy Austrian wines, but there were several Rieslings aging in the cellar and 'it just seemed time to open one."

The wine was a Domane Wachau, Terrassen, Federspiel from the 2006 vintage.  Federspiel in this region is a wine between 11% and 12.5%.  When the pork came out of the oven it needed to rest for an hour and that was when I opened the wine.  That was a good choice because the wine needed that much time and more to really open up. There was a good bit of kerosene and sulfur at the start.  It took a fair bit of swirling to minimize those aromas in the glass so I decanted most of the rest of the bottle.

A medium golden color was a good indication of some age on this wine and there was great body in the glass.  After a few minutes it began to smell like Riesling,  The hint of kerosene was still there but so was an intense aroma of summer rain on dry limestone.  The fruit was mostly barely apples and peaches.  This was a firmly structured wine that played with going over the edge in both dryness and tartness but succeeded in only pushing the the boundaries. 

With the pork it was almost perfect.  There was a sweetness in the crust of the pork from the brown sugar rub and that really intensified the apple qualities in the wine.  There was a sauce for the pork that included cooked down frozen peach slices and that was an amazing match for those flavors.  All the way through the meal the wine stayed balanced and refreshing.  Great choice and a good wine.

2006 Domane Wachau Terrassen Federspiel Riesling.  12.5% alcohol and $17.