Unbottled – Griesel & Compagnie Grand Cuvée

The series lost a bit momentum, but now I am back at it. On top of that, I changed the focus a bit more towards natural wines. The next region in this little series is the Hessian Bergstrasse. There was really only one option here, to go with the Griesel Grand Cuvée. After all, this was the bottle my wife and I celebrated our engagement with back in 2020.

Griesel & Compagnie is located in Bensheim with around 7,5 ha of vineyards. The manager is renown Niko Brandner and their current cellar master is Rachele Crosara. The grapes are hand-picked, spontanously fermented.

This time we had the 2018 vintage. The Cuvée in this case was 56 % Pinot Noir, 22 % Pinot Blanc, 22 % Pinot Meunier. The first fermentation occurred with natural yeast and the second fermentation was done in the bottle. Griesel aged the wine in barrique barrels (30 %) and stainless steel (70 %) for a whole year. Afterwards, the sparkling wine rested 46 months on the yeast. The Tirage of our bottle was on 19.07.2019 and the cuvée was disgorged in June 2023.

Excellent sparkling wine

I just love the bone-dry style of the Griesel sparkling wines. The Grand Cuvée is no exception! It starts with a melange of red apples, yeast and yellow fruits. Next I notice typical Pinot Noir gooseberry notes. There were also brioche, ripe fruits and fruit skin flavours noticeable. After a while a beautiful honey taste developed. On the palate, you notice some acidity, but it is well-balanced by the yeast flavours. Towards the aftertaste, there were some mineral notes reminding me a bit of chalk. The aftertaste itself is very long with red apples and brioche flavours.