Silvaner Sundays – Rudlof May Silvaner Brut Nature

As last time was a special edition of Silvaner Sundays , this is this month’s standard edition. There aren’t many high-quality sparkling Silvaners out there. However, the Mays from Retzstadt produce an excellent one.

As Benedikt May told me at an event in the summer 2025, the grapes for their sparkling wine come from 60-year-old vines grown in a cooler, East facing vineyard. After the manual harvest grapes are slowly pressed over 12 hours with a special program. The base wine ages in 1200 l oak barrels. After the second fermentation in the bottle, the sparkling wine spends almost 48 months on the yeast. No Dosage is added after disgorging. This bottle came from the 2018 vintage.

Dry, but balanced

The Silvaner Brut Nature starts with subtle yellow fruits which are quickly joined by some mineral notes. Afterwards, you can also find some yeast and citrus. In the taste, there are a bit more yellow plum flavours in combination with Brioche as well as green fruits. The sparkling wine is bone dry, but well balanced at the same time.

Almost crowd-pleasing

My wife and I prefer very dry sparkling wines, so we enjoyed this one from the Mays very much. However, even folks who usually are not into dry sparklers loved this bottle. This way, it was an excellent apéritif.