Gut Oggau Weinland Theodora 2018

Story

The Weinland Theodora is produced at the Gut Oggau estate in Burgenland by Lake Neusiedlersee. The estate is run by Eduard Tscheppe and his wife Stephanie Eselböck-Tscheppe. Stephanie and Eduard focus on quality as a permanent quest, their aim is to achieve a natural vine balance and process the grapes as gently as possible, allowing them to make the best use of their vineyard’s strength. All their wines are vineyard-specific and express both the vine age and the character of these indigenous Austrian varieties. When they began to work with the wines in the cellar, they noticed that each wine seemed so alive with its own personality, that they decided to craft labels centred around the personality inside each bottle. Thus they created a family of wines: each wine is given the name of one family member and the artist Jung von Matt draws a face for each label. Most of the vineyards are field blended, and therefore there is little mention of grape varieties here, but they do work with 6 main grape varieties– Blaufrankish, Zweigelt Grüner Veltliner, Welchriesling, Weissburgunder (Pinot Blanc), and Gewurztraminer.

You shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but can you judge a wine by its label? Not really, of course, but Gut Oggau, an estate by Lake Neusiedl in Austria’s Burgenland province, possibly comes closest to making this true. “Wiltrude’s daughter. A pert but likeable young lady, who takes everyone’s heart by storm with her cheerful and animated manner. She is attractive like her mother and at the same time both impudent and elegant. The prankster at the vineyard Oggau, she is nonetheless most reliable and steady. She has a particularly close relationship with her beloved grandmother Mechtild and her favourite uncle Emmeram.”

Gut Oggau Weinland Theodora is drier than other vintages so it’s better suited to lighter fish dishes. A blend of Gruner Veltliner and Welsch Riesling this is dry, full, funky, tasty. The serious sister of Atanasius, Theodora is serious wine, complex and intellectual with depth and body, intriguing aromas of under-ripe melon, kiwi and yeasty notes.

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