Two Bottles Odinstal
We drink two bottles from the Odinstal Winery from the Palatinate: a Silvaner Nature from 2016 and a Riesling 120 N.N. from 2018.
On a tour through the Palatinate we walked through Weisenheim am Berg without any plans and got stuck at Charme du Sud café. Actually, we only wanted to eat some ice cream, but the wine list was really inviting and so ice cream turned into a bottle of Odinstal Silvaner Nature 2016 and a cheese plate. We still ate the ice cream aftewards. If you are in the area and have brought some time with you, this is an address to visit. In the Mediterranean-inspired backyard on a sunny autumn afternoon, it was definitely a great place to stay and the wine was great. Reason enough to put a bottle of it into our cellar for the blog.
Besides the Silvaner Nature from 2016, there is also the entry-level Riesling 120 N.N. in our glasses this time. The winery has been working bio-dynamically since 2006, has vineyards at unusually high altitudes for the Palatinate, and does as little as possible in the cellar. Natural wine.
The Silvaner has a lot of apple in the nose, more skin than fruit, as is so often the case with natural wines. In the mouth the wine is very dry with a lot of structure and in an interesting way also juicy. This means there is a lot of mouth watering, but it feels different from what I would otherwise describe as juicy. In the nose there is some grape, floral notes, green tea. Overall rather slim and rather long.
The Riesling is a real surprise. The nose is a blast. Lots of fruit, peach, ripe yellow apple, almost perfumed. So many sensations, so much happening. I probably wouldn’t have blindly put that in the Riesling drawer. But despite the natural wine touch, it’s clean and clear. In the mouth there is some tannin, acidity, a part of the nose also comes along on the palate, but it is very difficult to pin down which one it is. That is impressive. I never had something like this in my nose before, I have to smell it again and again. There’s melon, essential oils, sometimes reminiscent of bath water, then again apple, then elderberry blossoms. Wow. In the mouth you notice that the wine is still very young. The tannin is not really round yet, hopefully it will be after some time in the cellar. Just like the Silvaner, because there everything fits together nicely.
The Silvaner has a hard time after the Riesling. Not much happens when you smell it. It’s a good thing that it can live on the mouthfeel alone, so the lack of nose is no tragedy. With air the Riesling becomes rounder, showing where it could be heading to in the next years. Some citrus, the acidity comes out more, but in the end there is always the not quite round edge.
On the second day there is more Riesling-typicality in the fragrance. Less ethereal, more spicy, darker aromas. Peach ice tea without sugar, very dry, clear, great acidity. I immediately reordered two bottles.
The Silvaner has gained in fruit. It shows now a little bit lactic acid, vanilla yoghurt with apple, spices and a creaminess that was not there the first evening. Two completely different wines that nevertheless show a similar signature. That was really fun.