Central Wines Portfolio Tasting with Adam Michocki MS

Come for the Riesling, stay for the pierogi… Uncork, swirl, judge, repeat. pierogi on the side. Taste through our best portfolio ever. Our latest portfolio tasting brought together some genuinely exciting discoveries alongside a strong showing from the growers who built this list in the first place — proof that the portfolio keeps sharpening at both ends. The find of the day came from an unexpected corner: a new producer out of Luxembourg, working with Riesling aged nine years on its lees before release. The result is a wine of real depth and textural complexity — bready, saline, tightly wound — at a price that makes no sense for what’s in the glass, coming in under £20. It’s the kind of bottle that quietly resets people’s expectations of what Luxembourg Riesling can do. From Rheinhessen, we poured a set of Grosse Lage wines built on the Morstein site — one of the region’s most iconic vineyards, and it showed exactly why. Rich and precise, mineral-driven and built for the long haul, these are serious, age-worthy whites that stand comfortably alongside the best of the Rheingau and Mosel’s top crus. Austria delivered one of the standout wines of the tasting: a Grosse STK Lage Sauvignon Blanc from Styria. Concentrated, textured and layered in a way that few Sauvignon Blancs manage, it’s a genuine reminder that Styria belongs in the conversation about the world’s great expressions of the grape. And it wouldn’t be a Central Wines tasting without new vintages from the growers who’ve earned their place as house favourites — Turnau, the Silesian producer out of Poland, and Pitnauer in Austria both showed beautifully, with each new release building confidently on what came before. Taken together, it’s a tasting that captures what we’re trying to do with this portfolio: seek out the unexpected, back the sites and producers that reward patience, and keep raising the bar on the wines you already know and trust. Mini blind tasting competition with amazing prizes will take place