Riesling Gold Layen 2018 – Piri Naturel

Piri Naturel aka. Christine Pieroth takes part of the the German new wave of young, talented natural winemakers, that we just keep going on and on about!

Piri literally grew up among the vines, being born into a classic Riesling style family winery in Nahe. She started her own label with the release of her first vintage in 2019, and as the inheritor of the estate she wants to take the family winery in a more natural direction, step by step. The quality of the grapes remains her main focus and she practices organic farming with biodynamic influences, trying to adopt a more holistic approach to the work in the vineyards driven by the simple idea that healthy soils produce healthy grapes.

All of Piris wines are fermented with natural yeast and get bottled unfiltered and with very low levels of sulfur and sometimes nothing at all. She uses maceration in a very active way in order to extract aromas and texture from the grapeskins and from the seeds. Sometimes there’s a day’s skin contact, sometimes a week or more. She doesn’t follow any dogmas in her work, but tries to make characterful wines with structure and bite but balanced by a vibrant acidity.

The fact that Piri comes out of a traditional winemaking family and has learned the trade from the inside, is something that really shows in her wines that reflect craftsmanship more than crazy adventures in the outer echelons. Piri’s Riesling is the crispest example you can imagine. Her pét-nats are like exotic Lambrusco! Balancing sweetness of the juice and the bitter complexity of the fermentation.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>

Solfinn even goes so far as to say that if wine ever were to unite our worlds. Piri would be his ambassador. You cannot not like her wines. It’s just that tasty and well made.