Wenzel Voodoo Child Wild + Free 2023
Wenzel Voodoo Child Wild + Free 2023 – alternate view 2
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Wenzel Voodoo Child Wild + Free 2023

Wenzel
$33.00

Grape: Pinot Gris
Vintage: 2023
Type: Rosé

This natural orange wine is crafted from one-hundred percent skin-fermented pinot gris grapes by Michael Wenzel in Rust. The organically farmed fruit undergoes a completely spontaneous fermentation driven by native wild vineyard yeasts inside neutral containers. Because pinot gris has naturally dark berry skins, the prolonged maceration extracts a deep pink color that resembles a light red. The wine undergoes natural settling in the cellar and is bottled unfiltered with minimal sulfur.

It pours a deep, dark pink color, releasing clean aromatics of wild berries, blood orange zest, and ginger. On the palate, a medium-bodied, texturally rich frame pairs fresh stone fruit flavors with a chiseled vein of mineral acidity. The extracted phenols provide a fine, chalky structural grip that masterfully shapes the clean mouthfeel. An energetic thread of natural acidity cuts right through the volume, maintaining excellent freshness. It finishes bone-dry and crisp.

Wenzel is Michael Wenzel's family estate in Rust, on the western shore of Lake Neusiedl in Burgenland, where the family has been making wine for centuries. The domaine is especially important for its role in reviving Furmint in Austria: Michael's father Robert brought historic plant material back from Hungary in the 1980s, when the variety had nearly disappeared from Rust. Today Wenzel farms organically and works with Furmint, Blaufrankisch, Pinot Noir and other varieties in limestone, gneiss and quartz-influenced sites. The wines are spontaneous, minimally handled and quietly radical, linking Burgenland's present to a nearly lost Danube tradition.