Schloss Halbturn - Cuvée Impérial White 2002
The harvest is destemmed, then undergoes cold maceration before fermentation which takes place either in stainless steel vats or in tapered wooden vats depending on the grape varieties and the final destination of the juices. In the first case, regular pumping over is carried out, in the second, the manual punching down technique is used. The temperature is kept below 30 °.
Depending on the range and type of wines to be made, the aging takes place in vats, in tuns, or, for the most part, in barrels (note that the estate uses both Burgundy pieces and Bordeaux barrels). The origin of the barrels is exclusively French and comes from several great houses. Some tests have been carried out with Hungarian and Croatian antlers but they were not sufficiently conclusive to be continued. The toasts are medium or medium plus. The proportion of new wood as well as the duration of aging obviously varies according to the vintages but the policy of the domain is to keep a great deal of measure in this area by favoring the direct expression of the fruit.
Upon analysis, one realizes perfectly that the project is based on a fairly precise vision of what Schloss Halbturn can and wants to offer as a type of wine. Nothing is really left to chance and the range of the range in three specific segments, just like the stylistic profile of the wines offered, are perfectly in line with the initial premises. To tell the truth, the slogans "Klasse statt Masse" or "Kompromisslose Qualität" could not mean much any more by dint of being repeated but we perceive a real commitment of the team to give them a concrete meaning and the tasting of the wines attests to a certain success in this direction even if there is still some way to go to arrive, on the whole production, at the level of personality, character and vector of emotion of the very best Burgenland wines.
It is clear that the estate does not seek to produce competitive, colorful, powerful, over-concentrated and… “flashy” wines. On the contrary, the objective is rather to rely on the elegant and digestible side. Without being explicitly stated, the focus is more on gastronomy than on pure tasting.