Cameron Douglas: Seifried Zweigelt 2024

Seifried Zweigelt 2024, Nelson. RRP $20.00  

A distinctive, ripe, and exuberant red berry fruit bouquet with suggestions of plums, then violets, blackberry, and boysenberry followed by lees and a delicate positive reduction. A nicely dry wine on the palate with flavours of boysenberry and tart plums, violet and spice. Taut and still developing with best drinking from 2026 through 2030+. 

 

The Food:  

Zweigelt is a cross from St. Laurent & Blaufränkisch developed in 1923 by Dr Friedrich "Fritz" Zweigelt. It has the softness and elegance from the St Laurant and robustness and backbone of acidity and tannins from the Blaufrankish. This means the wine will work rather well with foods that a little vigour, but not too much.  

My suggestion is therefore a venison sausage with an onion jam and side of lyonnaise potatoes. Higher quality venison sausage has both and earthy quality and meaty quality without being gamy, there’s always a little fat layer in the sausage as well. So the Zweigelt uses it’s St Laurant parent as the contrasting fruity side to the earthiness and the Blaufrankish parent as the contrast and deeper fruit flavours to the fatty side. The wine is also softened by the cream used in the potatoes.  

  

The Season: 2024   

Nelson had a very good growing season in 2024. There was expectation for an El Niño year —there was 3 La Niñas in a row— however it was a hot, dry summer season. It gave growers a great flowering set and yields were predicted to be high. So overall, a great season – there was however a frost event, but any damage was mitigated by the plants reactive repair mechanism. Truth is there was some variability across the region, yet I do not think wine drinkers will have noticed anything at all. 

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack Team podcast
from News Talks.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
That'd be trying to get your wine of the week
and Master Somelier Cameron Douglas is here with us this morning.

Speaker 3 (00:16):
Kilder, good morning, nice to be back.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
Nice to be chatting with you. Your wine for us this week,
and please forgive me butchering. The pronunciation is seafreed. I
think I can do that, but I think we say
SEAFREI don't we find Nelson.

Speaker 3 (00:28):
Seafreid, seafreed or sifried.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
Okay, okay, let's go sifried Zweigeldt. Yeah, from twenty twenty four. Okay, Sweigelt.
I think I think okay, we're close enough. A cifried
Zweigeldt from Nelson twenty twenty four is the year tell
us about the wine.

Speaker 3 (00:46):
Well, this is this is a wonderful wine. That is
it ticks all the boxes of I need a red wine.
Which one is it going to be? I don't want
it too light and I don't want it too heavy.
And Swigelt ticks all of those boxes in such a
lovely way. It's right, it's exuberant, It's got lots of
red berry fruit flavors from plums to blackberries to boison berries,

(01:10):
laced with violets, lots of delicacy in there. But it's
also dry, so it has this texture to it as well.
That is from what we call across in the wine world.
It's across from Saint Laurent Great Variety in bloo Frankish
Great Variety, and that was developed in nineteen twenty three

(01:35):
by doctor Frederick or Fritz as they call him, Vigout.
So he named this new great variety after himself.

Speaker 2 (01:42):
What do you think, Yeah, well, well might as well.
Why not, there's no guarantee that a century later a
New Zealand radio host isn't going to But to the name.

Speaker 3 (01:54):
Well, you know what, Saint Laurent's parents are the Saint
Laurent and the blow Frankish right, right. But Saint Laurent's parents,
one of its parents is pinan War. So there's a
little link between the idea of sort of that softness
and elegance from the Saint Laurent parent and then sort

(02:15):
of that more robust muscly side from the blow Frankish right.
And so when it comes to food, it is also
rather versatile and I can only make suggestions to the listeners.
But I thought, gosh, one thing that I've had that
is really delicious with the wine, mate, this is venus
and sausage. Yeah, and venus and sausage is always going

(02:39):
to have this little layer of richness, a little bit
of fattiness, which sausage is like. But if you contrast
all of that immediately with something like onion jam and
then layered potatoes with cream and cheese, then you've got
the elements for a fabulous wine and food pairing because

(03:00):
of the sweetness of the meat and the sweetness of
the Saint Laurent side Bigeld, and then you've got this muscly, meaty,
tannic side of the wine that contrasts perfectly with the
fattier side of the sausage. And a red wine of
this sort of weight and intensity works rather well with

(03:21):
something that's got cream in it, because all of that
nice protein and cheesiness and creamy potatoes softens any tannins
that you encounter in a wine like this. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:32):
In twenty twenty four turned out to be a pretty
good vintage for the Nelson region, right because they were
expecting l Nina or in Almina.

Speaker 4 (03:40):
Right, yeah, yeah, there was a little bit of an
expectation that they might get a different kind of season
away from the Lanina cycle into an al Nino, but
it kind of didn't happen because it was.

Speaker 3 (03:53):
Very hot and very dry, and that meant great things
in terms of fruits that after flowering and everything was
looking great, but when an unexpected frost comes along that
hit some of the region and that sort of blew
the idea out of the fish tankers. They say, however,

(04:13):
grapevines have a wonderful way of recovering and you wouldn't
know that there was any frost affected fruit anywhere in
that region after that recovery. So in summary, they had
a great seat.

Speaker 2 (04:26):
Yeah right, yeah, okay, great. So the wine is a
sifried Zvigelt from twenty twenty four. Sounds fantastic, Thank you, Cameron.
We'll make sure all the details are on the news
talks he'd be website.

Speaker 3 (04:36):
And great pronunciation.

Speaker 2 (04:37):
Well it only took me five attempts. We got there
in the end, but no, it sounds amazing. I've not
had a vigult before, so I reckon that could be
a bit of me.

Speaker 3 (04:45):
Yeah, check it out it's a great wine.

Speaker 1 (04:48):
For more from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame, listen live
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