Sandwich Pinot Gris, 2020

Our family estate is located in the Strekov wine region in South Slovakia, just a few kilometers north from the river Danube. This region is Slovakia’s sunniest and warmest region, ensuring perfect conditions for winemaking. The founder and the owner of the winery is the Mátyás family. Our history started generations ago, the knowledge of vine-growing is our family legacy, even our great-grandfathers made a few barrels of wines each year to satiate their own needs. The Mátyás Family Estate, as a winery, was founded in 2003. In the first years, we had to buy the grapes from local vine-growers, but the desire to improve the quality of the grapes and wines led to the establishment of a twelve-hectare vineyard in 2008 and 2009. Our philosophy in the vineyards is returning back to nature: farming sustainably, keeping and increasing the valuable biodiversity. We cultivate our vineyards in organic way since the plantation, and we are certified organic farmers since 2013. Our aim is to reach biodynamic farming method, as the highest cooperation and harmony with the nature and the universe, so we strive to do our works according to the moon phases and the constellations. Our vineyards are located on the edge of the old and idyllic cellar village of Nová Vieska, on the excellent slopes of the Somlyó-hill, facing southwest. This steep hillside lies only 8 kilometers from the river Danube, open towards the river, which makes our weather windy and breezy 365 days a year, thusly helping our organic viticulture. We planted our 12 hectare vineyard on this exceptionally located hill-side in 2008 and 2009. Our varieties are: Feteasca regala, Sauvignon Blanc, Traminer, Welschriesling, Pinot Blanc, Chardonnay, Riesling, Pinot Gris, Pinot noir, Blaufrankisch and Dunaj. The soils of our vineyards are limestone and sandstone based loess and brown forest soils. Before the plantation of our vineyards, this land was cultivated as a crop-field for few decades, thus the effects of the erosion were significant, thinnifiing the upper layer of the soil, which makes the life of the plants a bit more difficult, but, on the other hand, it increases the mineral character of our wines, strengthening their terroir aspects, which is one of our main intentions. Our work in the cellar could be defined by two important principles: the tradition and the nature. As a traditional winemaking method, most of our wines are fermented and aged in oak barrels, spending there the longest time available. We do not interfere the fermentation nor the aging; we are just observers of these processes. It means that the yeasts, enzymes and other additives, and the methods of the industrial winemaking, such as filtration, have been banned from our cellar. We use only a minimal amount of sulphites just before bottling, up to 30mgs, or in some cases any. We strive for making our estate completely sustainable, so in the past few years we completed our farm with organic vegetable gardens and extensive livestock farming, such as racka sheep and mangalica pigs.