2016 Tramin Unterebner Pinot Grigio Review And Tasting Notes
The 2016 Tramin Unterebner Pinot Grigio is a colossal wine from the Dolomites and dares. It takes flight from opulent citrus and fruity base, refines in wood, builds muscles, and then soars into the sky driven by a splendid minerality and freshness.
By now, the South Tyrolean wineries have realized that the Dolomite terroir has the potential of unique depth and complexity. The times of excellent yields and lean skins of salt and lemon are now over. It rightly points to creaminess, stratification, organoleptic characteristics, and aromatic volume development.
The downside is the brand of wood used to age these ambitious wines. Often it weighs down and masks naturalness and evolution. It is well balanced and acts as an engine, adding opulence with grace.
Who said that wine should only be made in steel, concrete, or amphora?
The influence of the wood is there, but it must be dosed and managed well. Otherwise, it creates stylization as an end in itself and useless softness.
Drinking natural wines, all pulp, and juice, is fine, but this does not mean that conventional wines should be demonized, especially when there is so much care, attention, and care behind the production of these wines.
Is it a wine that wants to distort the concept of South Tyrolean wine, which aims at the American market and drives Suckling and Parker crazy? Winks at the great Burgundian whites that only after 10 years of rest can emerge from the coils of the wood to express their varietal character?
These are commercial considerations that do not interest us, also because this 2016 Unterebner Pinot Grigio is not barricaded aromatically speaking and has not made barriques, but tonneaux and only partially.
How is it produced?
The grapes come from a cru located at an altitude of 600 meters. The vines are 10 to 30 years old and enjoy excellent southeast exposure. The soil is a mixture of limestone, clay, and porphyry. The rest is done by the temperature range and the Dolomites, which bring fresh air, excellent for making the grapes aromatic, avoiding baking.
After the harvest, the must ferments in wooden vats and tonneaux. The malolactic fermentation is not interrupted. Aging on the lees in large barrels and tonneaux.
Organoleptic characteristics
The result is a full-bodied wine, played on this dualism made of butter and acidity, a game between salt and spices, between ripe fruit and depth and momentum. And honestly, the game is worth the candle. Perhaps it will not be a tight and snowy wine all pulp, but it compensates with the aromatic development that it developed first in wood and then in the bottle.
Of course, this is the 2016 vintage and a few years of rest in the bottle did him a lot of good. They rounded off the fruity and mineral aggressiveness, blending them with fruit and wood flavors, creating more harmony. The 2020 vintage is much less enveloping, but this is only a problem of youth, not of quality.
The bouquet is Pindaric. It seems to be in a high-altitude pastry recipe, catapulted into a tropical plantation where garden gnomes made of marzipan bake all day.
The fruit is ripe but has an austere mood. Everything is played on lysergic tones with a fuchsia acid color: cooked apple, banana pudding, apple pie with vanilla drowned in tobacco and sprinkled with dried sage and lemon cooked at low temperature in broth mango.
You will find everything there, and obviously, there is no shortage of the classic spices typical of Pinot Grigio. Overall it’s a nice trip, it has a lot to give, but it never loses clarity and has a certain elegance. It is not linear.
On the palate, it reserves excellent surprises. The subtlety is hidden under pillows of custard and rock flavors, but it feels. You feel the fabric and texture. It flows full and voracious over a sea of butter, nevertheless, the supernova of salt and lemon fermented in koji helps balance.
If you are looking for a histrionic wine, deep and laminated in development, you have found it. If you like sour-style indigenous juices and yeasts, forget it.
Price
22-24 euros: it’s ok.
Food Pairings
Parmigiana ravioli, spaghetti with clams, chicken tikka masala, Chicken Cacciatore, Vitello Tonnato, truffle risotto, pasta alla carbonara.
