I’d been tempted by this attractive bottle lurking on the shelf at Apolónia for some time, but the hefty price tag of €32.25, coupled with the fact that I had no idea if it would be worth the money, made me resist – until now that is.
As I have mentioned, over recent weeks I have been using lockdown as an excuse to sample some more expensive wines. On the back label of the bottle, it simply states “Orange Juice”, so I assumed it was, therefore, an orange wine, and seeing that it comes from Mosel in Germany, it had to be Riesling. I was convinced.
What I had not noticed on the rear label, written upside down, was the name of one of Portugal’s top winemakers, Dirk Niepoort, the fifth generation of the great Port Wine house Niepoort.
It was only when I took my first taste of the wine and was so impressed by what is one of the best orange wines I have ever tried, that I inspected more carefully.
Orange wine is, of course, nothing to do with oranges. It is simply a white wine made like a red wine, fermented and aged in contact with the skins to extract all of the colour and flavour. And this is an outstanding example.
Unmistakably Riesling on the nose, the wine is full and firm in the mouth with good tannic structure and layers of flavour.
After a little research, I discovered that this is one of Dirk’s special projects, a joint venture with a renowned Mosel producer of top-quality Riesling.
