Traiser BASTEI 

No vineyard on Planet Wine is more extreme than the Bastei, the narrow strip of vines clinging to the foot of the more than 200 meter high Rotenfels, German for red cliffs.

The Rotenfels is particularly impressive when the rock face glows red in the setting sun. This gigantic mass of volcanic rhyolite is the highest inland cliff between the Alps and Scandinavia.  

The soil is composed of the fragments that fell off the cliff over thousands of years and collected as scree at its base. This, along with an average rainfall of barely half a meter per year, has transformed the Riesling vines in the Bastei into semi-bonsai. Our scant single hectare yields just a couple of thousand bottles each year, but what a wine it is!

Our Bastei GG needs some time for its warm yet mysterious personality to fully unfold, and it therefore spends two full years in cask before bottling. In spite of its tendency to opulence – ripe apricot and mango aromas are typical – the wine’s finale is always cool and delicately mineral.