Domaine Ciringa

Sauvignon Blanc on the Slovenian slope

Sauvignon Blanc sets the first decision for Armin Tement; Stefan Tement, winemakers at Domaine Ciringa in Zgornja Kungota. The work begins on the southern flank of Zieregg, just behind the Austrian border, where the family’s Styrian discipline crosses into Štajerska Slovenija without changing its center of gravity: origin first, cellar second. Domaine Ciringa began in 2009 as the Slovenian side of a Tement idea, a young estate rather than an inherited local dynasty, and its shape is narrow by design. Sauvignon Blanc carries the place. The family’s Austrian estate in Ehrenhausen is known for fully organic and biodynamic production, with Sauvignon Blanc 'Kalk & Kreide' and Ried Zieregg Sauvignon Blanc as named signatures. At Ciringa, that same attention turns to the Slovenian face of the hill, where the address changes, the slope continues, and the method keeps asking the same question of farming and restraint. The named winemakers here are held inside that estate system rather than presented as solitary cellar figures. That matters in a place like this. The lineage is not a parade of individual mentors; it is a family operation extending a precise way of reading Zieregg across a border.

Fosilni Breg, Pruh, and one variety

The program is varietally tight. Domaine Ciringa works with Sauvignon Blanc in Štajerska Slovenija, including bottlings marked Fosilni Breg and Pruh, names that pull the wine back to particular ground rather than to a broad regional signature. Fosilni Breg means Fossil Hill, and the estate’s setting is described through steep, fossil-rich marl vineyards on the Zieregg flank. That is the technical register of the place: site name, slope, soil, and the cool herbal line of Styrian Sauvignon Blanc. The wider Tement and Ciringa operation is reported at roughly 450,000 bottles annually, but Ciringa itself reads as a focused estate within that broader scale, with Sauvignon Blanc carrying still white wines and a sweet expression. The portfolio has included Fosilni Breg across several forms, among them a 2023 organic Sauvignon Blanc, a 2019 Štajerska Slovenija Sauvignon Blanc “Fosilni Breg,” and a 2017 sweet “Fosilni Breg” Desertno Vino in 0.375 L. Reserve bottlings from Fosilni Breg also appear in 2015 and 2017. The pattern is clear without needing decoration: one grape, several readings of one hill, and the patience to let vineyard names do the separating.

The cellar looks back toward the vineyard

The atmosphere at Domaine Ciringa is quiet because the estate gives its attention to the vineyard rather than to spectacle. The cellar, the vineyard, and the tasting room sit in the logic of the slope: southern exposure, the Austrian line close by, Sauvignon Blanc moving from marl into glass. This is not a room built around noise. The pleasure is in the narrowness of the brief. A tasting here belongs to the vineyard first, with Fosilni Breg and Pruh supplying the grammar and Štajerska Slovenija giving the wines their formal address. It ends on the hill. The concrete noun to hold is Fosilni Breg, the fossil slope that keeps Domaine Ciringa from becoming only a border story.