It’s a natural instinct for a Polish wine drinker to closely follow the vinous progresses of our immediate neighbours, Saxony, Bohemia, Slovakia, the Ukraine, as well as our pre-1939 neighbours such as Romania and pre-1772 ones including Hungary and Moldavia. Of all these countries, Slovakia has been delivering the sorest disappointments. Despite the obvious availability of good terroirs progress has been very slow. Shopping randomly in a wine shop in Bratislava or leading wine town Modra, you’re guaranteed to bump into a record-high amount of faulty and unexciting bottles.
How much Slovakia is missing in terms of quality has been consistently demonstrated since 2001 by Egon Müller, Germany’s – and for some, the world’s – leading Riesling vintner. Through family affairs Müller has taken over some 20 hectares in the south of the country, on the Danube and the Hungarian border (Štúrovo is the nearby city and wine appellation). The estate of Château Belá has been delivering a lovely off-dry Riesling, or Rizling Rýnsky as it’s called locally, with plenty of minerality and personality.
The 2004 vintage I’m tasting today belongs to the sweeter wines produced here (2005 and 2007 are nearly dry). Its structure, in fact, is very peculiar: it has plenty of sugar on the level of a German Auslese or Alsatian vendange tardive but double the amount of acidity of those styles. The result is a fabulously bold, searing style of wine that’s difficult to classify. The aromatic spectrum is very varietal – stone fruit, citrus and honey – with plenty of minerality wrapped around the acidic backbone. And with this acidity, it’s hardly surprising this wine is ageing so well. This 2004 vintage is already showing quite a mature bouquet of wax, dried herbs, cool cellar (the elusive German Firne aroma) but on the palate there is huge lemony freshness. It’s really an explosively expressive wine – technically far from perfect balanced and challenging to some palates but in the era of bland international-styled wines, the personality of this Riesling is a rare gem. Slovakia can produce brilliant wine – and hopefully it will follow on Belá’s trail.
