Polish wine, would you believe it?! Poles consider beer to be lemonade. Something you drink to refresh your mouth in between the shots of vodka. I reckoned they considered wine to be something similar. It actually turns out they produce it! In one of the airport shops in Warsaw they even have a full rack of Polish wine. And of course, I had to try it… I will not deny that I bought the bottles wondering if I really wanted to throw away my money just like that?! But actually, this turned out to be an interesting experience! Here they are :

Riesling 2015, Winnica Equus (Winnica = Winery)

Not a bad nose, quite lemony, a touch of minerality. Not very complex but not bad either. No off aromas. This wine is very fresh, quite high acidity, but has a round mouthfeel at the same time. Lees stirring perhaps? This wine reminds me of a basic Chablis : nice to drink, strong acidity but not cutting your tongue in slices. Would be nice to drink on a sunny day as an apéritif. I would not recognize this as riesling, however. But that’s not really surprising. Grapes that are not fully ripe do not achieve their full aromatic potential and rather have lemony aromas. Riesling is a late ripening variety, so I suppose that they have a hard time getting their grapes fully ripe. Still, this is a good effort! The price tag on the airport was around 30€, and that’s too expensive for what you get. But I’m sure you can get find this at a better price.

Solaris 2015, Winnica Turnau

Very refined nose, very mineral. Solaris is a hybrid and is the result of several crossings (I’ll save you the details), but Riesling, Pinot Gris and Muscat are some of the grapes used at some point. And the nose is actually quite reminiscent of riesling. It’s very expressive, very elegant. I drank the rest of this wine on day three and then I also had peaches, and a hint of honey. Nice! The wine is very fresh, even a bit of fizz on day one. Good, refreshing acidity, very fruit driven, but very fine at the same time. This is not just a good wine. This is excellent stuff. I can drink this every day! Is this Polish wine?! Wow, I had not expected this… Winnica Turnau is located in Banie, that’s a town near the Baltic Sea. Yes, the Baltic Sea! You can’t get much further north in Poland… And still, they make good wine there. That reminds me of what a French vigneron told me once : you can make white wine almost everywhere in the world. Well, that turns out to be true. And not just white wine, but good white wine!

Na zdrowie!