2013 Weingut Familie Prieler Blaufränkisch Marienthal

Released only now, Georg Prieler’s 2013 Blaufränkisch Ried Marienthal Oggau am Neusiedlersee displays a dark and matured ruby color with a garnet shimmering rim. The nose is pure and matured, quite open but elegant and refined, with ripe red and dark fruit aromas intertwined with notes of pepper, black tea, dried flowers, iodine, sweet herbs and red jelly fruits. Macerated and fermented for 21 days (so about five days longer than today) and aged in 500-liter barrels for 23 months (so no racking to a large oak casks after eight months like in 2017), this is a full-bodied, elegant and silky-textured Blaufränkisch with deep, round, intense and sustainable fruit, fine and crunchy tannins and vital and salty acidity that makes this a very digestible red wine from the famous limestone soils of the Ried Marienthal, which connects the communes of Oggau with Rust. It is the terroir and the grape, but in particular the bottle age, that make Blaufränkisch a great red wine. This is one of them. Tasted in May 2021.