WTNs: Lots of St. Laurent

A week ago a friend arranged a tasting of mainly St. Laurent. We started with a blind white, the 2011 Hirschmugl Cabernet Blanc. Cabernet Blanc is not a white wine made from Cab Sauv but a cross between Cab Sauv and an unknown white variety. It was quite a nice, light white with passionfruit and grass (of the non-drug variety) aromas; nice acidity. Pleasant but simple stuff.

Then we had the St. Laurents:
1997 Johanneshof Reinisch St. Laurent Grande Reserve Holzspur - Tattendorf Thermenregion
An old wine aroma: some rye bread, woodsy - so a pleasant enough nose, but I didn't anymore notice varietal character in it. The palate was in a more youthful shape with still sweet fruit and harmonious acidity and really quite incredible length. Nice!

1998 Weingut Juris St. Laurent Reserve - Gols, Neusiedlersee
A very sweet, peachy aroma that really does slightly resemble Pinot Noir (though often talked of as similar to PN, I don't often see a St. Laurent that actually is like it!). The structure is nicely resolved, the fruit is still there - to my tastes this was in the best spot of maturity in the tasting with youth and age in perfect harmony.

1999 Johanneshof Reinisch St. Laurent Grande Reserve Holzspur - Tattendorf Thermenregion
Peachy, ripe, dark fruit; sweet and concentrated, good tannins and fresh acidity, perhaps a bit of oak still that needs to get lost, but overall a nice wine in a quite powerful style.

2001 Brigitte & Gerhard Pittnauer St. Laurent Alte Reben - Gols, Neusiedlersee
Porty aroma. Sweet and lifeless.

2002 Brigitte & Gerhard Pittnauer St. Laurent Alte Reben - Gols, Neusiedlersee
A lighter style of St. Laurent, instead of the sweet fruit of the others this was almost a Cabernet Franc -like wine with leafy, earthy aromas and a general cool feel to it. Lighter, less fruity and more savoury than the others. But for some reason I still didn't really care for it: on some sniffs the leafy character turned too harsh.

2004 Weingut Rosi Schuster (Hannes Schuster) St. Laurent Zagersdorf - Neusiedlersee-Hügelland
This was very young but was still one of my favourites of the tasting: a loamy, woodsy aroma but pure, clean and bright fruit, too. Very structured, quite austere even, less fruit-driven than most others in the tasting and more a savoury style. Palate-cleansing finish. It has some oak that I wish wasn't there, but not so much that I couldn't get pleasure from this. Good potential if you like an austere style of St. Laurent.

2005 Gernot & Heike Heinrich St. Laurent - Gols, Neusiedlersee
Glossy, modern and anonymous. Not a very harmonious palate: the attack is all fruit and no structure and the acidity appears on the palate almost as an afterthought. Not my thing.

2005 Brigitte & Gerhard Pittnauer St. Laurent Alte Reben - Gols, Neusiedlersee
Smelly, almost chemical/soapy aroma; thin and weird. (In this tasting I really did not get along with the Pittnauers, though none of these were flawed bottles and all of them were favourites of other tasters.)

2006 Umathum St. Laurent Vom Stein - Frauenkirchen, Neusiedlersee
I last tasted this in 2010 when the oak was far too obvious. It still is quite strong but now the wine itself has appeared from the forest: this now has a really attractive and expressive peachy aroma. Young, tight and crunchy. Needs time.

2007 Weingut Josef Pöckl Pinot Noir Classique - Möchhof, Neusiedlersee
Accidentally the PN was opened instead of the St. Laurent. Smells like Chilean Pinot: jammy and oaky! The amount of oak and toast in this is silly. Bitter oak coupled with great sweetness is just not my thing.

2008 Gernot & Heike Heinrich St. Laurent - Gols, Neusiedlersee
Sweet, ripe raspberry aromas and some oak that needs to go into hiding. Bittersweet yet oddly structureless. Anonymous.

2009 Gernot & Heike Heinrich St. Laurent - Gols, Neusiedlersee
This was the best of the three Heinrichs. Sweet and dark fruit, smells strongly of raspberry. Some oak. But this has proper grip and refreshing character in addition to the round fruit. I can see myself enjoying this once it ages.

2010 Weingut Rosi Schuster (Hannes Schuster) St. Laurent St Margarethen - Neusiedlersee-Hügelland
Red toned and woodsy aroma. Lovely structure, brighter and lighter style than most others. Some years more and this should be lovely.

2010 Umathum St. Laurent - Frauenkirchen, Neusiedlersee
Sweet, red toned and primary; tight but with good balance and freshness. Needs a few years but I think this will turn out nice.


Then we had a few blind wines:
2004 Umathum Ried Hallebühl
Young, tight, loamy and unexpressive even with plenty of air. Sweet and ripe palate, but well structured. Shut down. Hold.

2002 Weingut Rosi Schuster (Hannes Schuster) St. Laurent Zagersdorf - Neusiedlersee-Hügelland
Quite unlike the other Schusters in the tasting proper: sweet and lacking somewhat in freshness and structure. Not quite flabby, but certainly not nervous. Only ok.

2005 Prager Grüner Veltliner Smaragd Weissenkirchener Zwerithaler
When served blind we all thought this was an off-dry wine with perhaps 20 g/l RS! It certainly smells like a dessert, perhaps even with a bit of botrytis and it is super-ripe; it is incredibly rich and sweet (though apparently laboratory figures claim that this is dry) and somewhat lacking in acidity and freshness. A bit too much for me.

1996 Umathum Zweigelt Beerenauslese
Orange. Smells of copper kettles and honey. Very sweet and rich, and like almost always with Zweigelt, not very acidic. But the slightly aged aromas help in keeping this interesting - though only in small quantities.

Ii have not had St. Laurent. Your notes are well written. Thanks

Thanks David. If you've never tried St. Laurent you should try to find some - it can be a very attractive grape when not over-oaked (which is still sadly all too common in Austrian reds IMO). Johanneshof Reinisch is a St. L specialist and is usually widely available and not terribly expensive. His basic (no vineyard on the label) is a really wonderful expression of the grape IMO and is available in Europe for just c.10-12€.

Holy cow, Otto. That's a Kansas colloquialism for "holy $hit".
What a bunch of StLaurents. Thanks for sharing those notes.
It's a variety that I find very/very interesting. It can make an interesting range of styles.
I like them when they veer towards the PinotNoir style. But I also like many that veer towards
a Dolcetto or Refosco-style of wine.
I would like to have seen how MattRorick's ForlornHope StLaurent would have fared in that collection.
He makes the only StLaurent in Calif. From grapes grown in the Carneros in RicciVnyd. Probably the best
StLaurent I've ever had.
As usual, very interesting notes, Otto.
Tom

Yes, Thanks for the notes. -next time throw a Pfälzer in there for good measure We now have about as much St. Laurent growing in Germany as Austria has -though the Austrians still have a leg up on character (IMO).

Cheers,
Bill

Drat, I thought you'd be posting on the wines of Chx. La Tour Carnet, Belgrave, Camensac, Larose Trintaudon, etc. in Saint-Laurent.

Alex R.

I try every St Laurent I can (although my cellar probably has about one in it). I've never been that impressed with it as a serious grape. A pleasant grape when properly treated, sure, and sometimes a suprisingly pleasant one but never other than second rank, which is why I am always a tad surprised that some producers spend a fair bit of time on it.

I enjoyed your notes - by far the largest collection of SL notes I've seen in one place before. By the sound of it, I'd like to taste the Schusters and Umathum.

(PS - I had an interesting wine this past weekend that I'd put into the same class of miscellaneous sometimes interesting possibilities - a Monica from Sardinia that was very pleasant.)

(PPS - I do indeed have one bottle of SL in the cellar, looking at my list - but it is a 1998 - you snooze, and I suspect you end up with marinating material instead of pleasant wine. Oops.)

Well, I have just opened the `09 Rabl. Early impression here is a rather funky nose which I hope blows off. Some ripe fruit, cranberry, smooth tannin, not a lot of oak at all. Tastes better than it smells! Stay tuned.

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TN: 2009 Rabl St. Laurent Kamptal.

SC, $22, 13% alc, 15% oak aged, I serve slightly chilled.
Color is a light ruby red, watery rim. Very funky nose initially but did blow off with time. Earthy, raspberry as it opens, pepper.
Entry is spice, fair acidity, cranberry, oak not noted. Tastes better than it smells! Smooth tannins, thought it might be more pinot`esque though. Hint of riper fruit on day 2, its all Ok but not going to try again.