Need help About this wine - I'm a newbie at wine

Would you mind reposting in plain text, please?

This is unreadable, thank you.

M.

I think he ment for you to drink it, not sell it.

George Cox

My brother gave me this bottle of wine from his cellar and I wanted to know more about it and it's current value range.

Where would I find this type of info? Is there a master wine cost book somewhere or a website I can go to to get this info? Any help would be appreciated.

The bottle is mostly written in German or Hungarian.

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Pieroth 1981 Ersekhalom-Bischofsberger Hungarian Spätburgunder

Red Ausbruch Grape Wine

Product of Hungary Bottled an shipped by Ferdinand Pieroth GMBH, Burg Layen, West-Germany

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Sorry about that....

My brother gave me this bottle of wine from his cellar and I wanted to know more about it and it's current value range.

Where would I find this type of info?  Is there a master wine cost book somewhere or a website I can go to to get this info? Any help would be appreciated.

The bottle is mostly written in German or Hungarian.

Pieroth

Red Ausbruch Grape Wine

Product of Hungary Bottled an shipped by Ferdinand Pieroth GMBH, Burg Layen, West-Germany

Michael Pr Would you mind reposting in plain text, please?

This is unreadable, thank you.

M.

Attachment decoded: untitled-1.htm

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Well, a short count reveals 13 English words against 9 in German (of which 7 names) and 1 Hungarian, but anyhow:

That's cheapish sweetish red plonk, made from pinot noir, designed for the low end of the German market. Absolutely no commercial value, curiosity only.

M.

True. And definitely on the very sweet side ("Ausbruch").

M.

So, a _sweet_ Pinot Noir? That´s ... odd. (Now I know somebody´s gonna tell me about the really _great_ sweet PN's made in Outer Mongolia or from this small but perfect plot in ... you name it ... and I´m sooo looking forward to it!) ;))))

Cheers

Nils Gustaf

Yes. "Ausbruch" in Hungarian is "Aszù", a term you probaly know from Tokaj. In Austria, Ausbruch ranges between Beerenauslese and Trockenbeerenauslese, requiring a minimum must weight of 139°Oe 38.1°Brix (BA is 127°Oe = 29.4°Brix, TBA 156°Oe = 35.3°Brix). But I am 100% sure that this wine is sweetened and not a botrytis wine.

Btw, you can find botrytised reds in Austria; Alois Kracher regularly has a red TBA in his collection, usually from zweigelt.

I've had a few pinot noir TBAs: Usually rather very light in colour, and not something that gets me excited.

M.

Nils states:"So, a _sweet_ Pinot Noir? That´s ... odd. (Now I know somebody´s gonna tell me about the really _great_ sweet PN's made in Outer Mongolia or from this small but perfect plot in ... you name it .. and I´m sooo looking forward to it!)".

You may only have to go to Germany to find a sweet Pinot Noir. Perhaps some is even exported to your country. Spätburgunder, as it is called in Germany, is Pinot Noir. It is grown in several parts of Germany, but for a long time at Assmannshausen in the Rheingau. The dry wine made from Spätburgunder there in many years is very light and nearly a pink wine. However sweet auslese wines long have been made there in years when conditions are right. I have never tasted the very sweet version, mainly because I did not think I would like it enough to seek it out. I would not be surprised to find a sweet Pinot Noir from Austria also. It seems that someone in Austria either makes, or has tried to make, a sweet, late harvest wine from just about every grape that will grow there, be it whiteor red.

My mailbox is always full to avoid spam. To contact me, erase snipped-for-privacy@webtv.net from my email address. Then add snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com . I do not check this box every day, so post if you need a quick response.

This week I had dinner at my sister's, she served a delightful Anderson Valley oddity, Husch Late Harvest Pinot Noir. At 8.5% residual sugar, it was only mildy sweet and finished remarkably clean and quite dry-feeling. It was a treat.

Dana

Hi Michael, I wasn't too sure whether that would be a sweet wine - interpreting Ausbruch as an expression of ripeness, equal to Auslese, and so possibly fermented to dryness... Wouldn't the common Bordeaux grapes reach sugar levels equal to Ausbruch, by the way? Anders

No. Ausbruch must readings (according to Austrian wine law) would mean an alcohol content of 20%, so Ausbruch can never be dry.

You might have confounded it with "Ausstich" - a term that, like Auslese, means something like "choice of the best", but has no legal definition. Auslese, otoh, in Austria has to have a minimum must weight of 21°KMW = 21°babo = 105°Oe = 24.7°brix which correspond to 13.5 to 14% of alcohol, so this latter can be dry. Note that in Germany, Auslese minimum sugar contents are much lower.

Absolutely not - except if you talk about Sauternes, Monbazillac et. al. in very good years.

M.

I bought a bottle of dry Assmanshäuser red the first time I visited Rheingau. It was marketed as a local specialty so I did not have much expectations for it and was therefore not disappointed.

I can't remember the producer any more, but there was not much to remember anyway. Light and thin are good descriptors for at least this wine. There might, however, be better examples of red from Assmanshausen, but based on the one bottle I've had I would not want to spend my time on a random search for them.

Cheers,

-Topi Kuusinen, Finland

...

Thank you Michael - I should have been aware that Ausbruch was that high up in must readings! See now by Google that it is at least 27 KMW = about 139 Oechsle = about 31.7 Brix. Maybe not too impressive in California or Morocco but certainly a quite high level in more northern areas! Anders

The Pinot Noir (Spätburgunder) grapes of Assmannshäusen were brought there from the Burgundy region of France by Cistercian monks in the 12th century. Thus the "late burgundy" name (translated from German) is quite logical. The Cistercian monks had very important holdings in Burgundy in the 12th century. The quaity of the wine and area of production had diminished in the early 1900s. The State Domain became holder of the largest part of the vineyards, and did much work to improve the quality. In the really poor years they sold the wine for making Sekt(sparkling wine). Most of the wine I have seen from Assmannshäusen is from the State Domain. The best vineyard may be Höllenberg. Even despite the efforts of the state, the wine is very different from Burgundy, and few would consider even the better examples great. The sweet auslese version seems to be relatively rare, especialy outside of Germany, probably because weather conditions seldom are favorable to make a good example of it. A Weissherbst also sometimes is made here. A Weissherbst often is a very pale pink. Michael Broadbent tasted a 1989 Assmannshäuser Weissherbst Auslese from Allendorf. He described it as "Warm amber; crisp, raisiy; medium-sweet, cinnamon spiciness, good acidity, dry finish" He rated it 3-star out of 5-star. From this description, I would guess that few people would connect it with either Burgundy or Pinot Noir in a blind tasting.

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Michael

Are saying that these wines reach 20% alcohol, or that they have residual sugar when the fermentation stops. Pardon my rudimentary knowledge of winemaking, but my understanding is that fermentation stops when most still wines reach 15 - 16 % alcohol.

Tom Schellberg

"Cwdjrx _" skrev i en meddelelse news: snipped-for-privacy@storefull-3172.bay.webtv.net... The Pinot Noir (Spätburgunder) grapes of Assmannshäusen were brought there from the Burgundy region of France by Cistercian monks in the 12th century.

Besides in Assmannshäusen, spätburgunder is widely grown in the Ahr Valley, just south of Bonn. The liblich-versions are good drinking for a picnic on a hot summers day, and there is a nice rotweinwanderweg (red-wine footpath) that will guide you from winegrower to winegrower. Some 10 years ago I brought 1/2 bottle of Spätburgunder Auslese, just of curiosity. However, when I eventually opened it some years later it was undrinkable. Maybe I should give the sweet redwines another go when I'm visiting Germany next time. I remember some nice sweet Amarone Recioto's, but that's quite another story. To return to the expression "Ausbruch": I think it in Austria is used for a sweet wine to which plain grape-juice had been added, after fermentation? A Hungarian "Ausbruch", imported to Germany, is something I would never trust nor touch. I wonder why we find these cheap east-european sweet wines in Germany at all..... HK

No. Fresh grape juice may be added to the shrivelled botrxtis berries to better "break out" (that's what "Ausbruch" literally means) the very sweet juice. In practice, this is almost never done - it's just a additional category between Beerenauslese and TBA.

M.

A Weißherbst is anything from white to rosé - and as such never connected with Pinot Noir or Burgundy. And the Auslese Broadbent had, was definitely a sweet one - so another element different from standard PN and Burgundy.

M.