Gelber Muskateller vom Opok 2018

Age of vines: 20 years old

Yields: 4000 kilograms per hectare

Soil: Limestone and clay silt

Varieties: Gelber Muskateller

Vinification Method: Grapes are hand harvested and destemmed. They are fermented in 2400-liter oval wooden casks with indigenous yeasts. The wine is lightly sulfured after it’s first racking, at around 10 months. The wine then spends 20 months aging in 1200 and 2400-liter wooden casks. It is bottled without fining or filtration.

Maria and Sepp Muster took over his parents’ 10-hectare winery in Styria in 2000 and began to work the vines biodynamically. They had an easy transition, as no herbicides or pesticides had ever been used there before. Rocky clay and silt soils dominate the steep hills of their vineyards. This clay silt is known locally as “Opok” after which two of their wines are named. The Graf wines also feature the opok soil but have steeper south-facing slopes that reduce yields and produce wines of more structure and pronounced mineral character. And finally, they make orange wines like Erde, which can be found in special clay bottles.