It is often difficult to decide which wines 🍷 to include in our monthly highlights. The more wines we taste at UnscrewMe, the more difficult it gets. Of course, this is a great problem to have! 🎉

We went to a couple of wine tastings in May and here we present some of the bottles which won us over immediately. Not on purpose, more by accident, we’ve included two wines from Austria 🇦🇹 this month. This just shows how good Austrian wines are.

Rare Riesling

• Wine: 1993 Riesling Smaragd Ried Achleiten
• Producer: Domäne Wachau
• Region: Achleiten, Wachau, Niederösterreich, Austria 🇦🇹
• Story:
  When Domäne Wachau presented their diverse range of wines at 67 Pall Mall, I had the joy 😃 to try amongst others this aged Riesling. With ripe apricot flavours and great minerality, this wine from the Achleiten vineyard was clearly one of my favourites.
  Besides the traditional Grüner Veltliner and Riesling options, I also really liked their exciting Backstage brand, where they experiment a little bit.

Bouncy Blaufränkisch

• Wine: BFF 2017
• Producer: JOISEPH Natur Weingut
• Region: Neuberg, Leithaberg, Burgenland, Austria 🇦🇹
• Story:
  Large tastings are always a bit of a challenge, and Real Wine Fair in London was no different. Plenty of great wines to choose from kept me entertained for longer than I had initially planned.
  I started with English wine and then tasted through a lot of countries and regions. For me, this Blaufränkisch was one of the best on that day. The wine has a beautiful colour, the taste is full of fruit and the wine also shows a satisfying structure.

Clever Chenin

• Wine: Flagship Range Chenin Blanc Late Harvest
• Producer: Monsoon Valley
• Region: Hua Hin Hills, Prachuap Khiri Khan, Thailand 🇹🇭
• Story:
  I was surprised when I recently came across a wine from Thailand. Not a traditional wine country, it was not clear what I should expect. In the end, it was a positive surprise 👍. This Late Harvest Chenin Blanc exhibits quince notes, while not being overly sweet, combined with a pleasing level of acidity. A truly delicious and balanced wine.
  Not only convincing me, this wine has also picked up 🏆 a Gold Medal at the Decanter World Wide Awards 2013, a Gold Medal at Mundus Vini International Wine Award 2015 and a Bronze Medal at the Hong Kong International Wine and Spirit Competition 2016.

Sharing is Caring

We’re always happy to hear about new restaurants with great wine lists, newly opened wine bars in London or just a nice wine you discovered recently.

If you have any recommendations, please let us know! Either comment on here or get in touch via social media through Twitter @unscrewmeapp, Facebook UnscrewMe or Instagram @unscrewmeapp.

Over the next weeks, we at UnscrewMe will continue to provide updates about interesting wine bars, highlight exciting new wine events and recommend some wines we enjoy. And maybe we will also add some more features to the platform.

(Between all the wine tastings, a good cup of coffee ☕️ from Department of Coffee and Social Affairs in Paddington or Clerkenwell Grind regularly helps us to put all the notes into a more easily digestible form.)

First published in June 2019.
Also available at https://medium.com/unscrewme/may-2019-wine-highlights-452b6f3c0828