Welschriesling/Olaszrizling/Graševina - Burgenland, Austria; Moravia, Czech Republic & Villány, Hungary

Welschriesling is a hard grape to get a handle on.  It goes by many different names in many different central European countries and though many of those names might lead you to believe it has certain relationships with other grapes, it actually doesn't.  Today I'd like to try and sift through what we do and don't know about this grape before getting to a few different wines I've recently tried from it.

The first thing one must do when dealing with this particular grape is to sort through the various synonyms it is planted under.  These synonyms fall into three broad categories:

1) The Welschriesling group.  This group consists of the names Welschriesling (as it is known in Austria, Canada, parts of Germany and Switzerland), Wälschriesling (Germany), Laški Rizling (Slovenia, Croatia and parts of Serbia), Rizling Vlašský (Slovakia), or Ryzlink Vlašský (Czech Republic).  In this group, Welsch, Wälsch, Laški and Vlašský all come from the same root word, but it isn't totally clear what that root word might be.  The most likely explanation is that they come from the German word welsch which means "foreigner," and that the name of the grape therefore means something like "foreign Riesling," meaning that it probably came into Germany or Austria from abroad.  Why and how the grape came to be identified with Riesling is unclear since Welschriesling bears no genetic, ampelographic or vinous relationship or similarity to Riesling.  It has also been suggested that the Welsch- prefix means "from Wallachia," which is a wine-making region in Romania.  This would be a possibility except for one thing...

2) In Romania, the grape is known as Italian Riesling, and variations on this name are found in a handful of other countries as well.  In northeastern Italy, it is known as Riesling Italico and the Hungarian name Olaszrizling simply translates as "Italian Riesling."  The grape was introduced into Italy in the 19th Century, but it has been grown elsewhere for longer than that.  Since it is known as Italian Riesling in Romania, it seems reasonable to assume that the grape came into Romania from Italy, which would have had to have happened in the 19th Century or later.  Given that the grape was known as Welschriesling before this time, it seems unlikely that the grape originated in Wallachia in Romania.

3) In Croatia, the grape is known as Graševina, or sometimes Graševina Bijela.  I don't read or speak Croatian, but when I enter the word Graševina into Google translate, it is translated into the word "Riesling," which is really interesting (Bijela just means "white").  If Graševina translates as Riesling, then it would make sense for Germans to refer to it as "foreign Riesling" to differentiate it from their Riesling.  Furthermore, Graševina is the most widely planted grape in Croatia, with over 21,000 acres devoted to the grape as of 2009.  Wine Grapes concludes from all of this that Welschriesling likely originated from Croatia, and the evidence seems fairly convincing to me.

Welschriesling is shockingly widely planted throughout central Europe, but wines made from it are still difficult to find in the US.  As mentioned above, it is Croatia's most widely planted grape, but it is also the most widely planted white grape of Hungary as well, accounting for just over 12,000 acres in 2008.  It is the second most widely planted grape in Austria (behind Grüner Veltliner) with nearly 9,000 acres under vine, which is almost twice the amount of regular Riesling grown in that country.  There are over 17,000 acres planted to the grape in Romania, 7,700 acres in Slovakia, 6,000 acres in Slovenia, 5,000 acres in Italy, and 3,000 acres in the Czech Republic.  Somewhat surprsingly, a grape called Borba in Spain is genetically identical to Welschriesling, but there is only about 20 acres planted there.

Welschriesling is made into a wide range of styles, but the two most common are dry table wines and late harvest/botrytized sweet wines.  I was able to try a variety of wines made from the grape from several different areas and in different styles. The first wine was the 2011 Gere Attila Pincészete Olaszrizling from the Villány region of Hungary (area 15 in red on this map).  I picked this wine up from my friends at Blue Danube Wine for around $13.  In the glass the wine was a fairly pale silvery lemon color.  The nose was fairly intense with aromas of apricot, pink grapefruit, pear and orange peel.  On the palate the wine was medium bodied with medium acidity.  There were flavors of lemon peel, lemon water and pear.  It was mild, delicate and subtle, but finished with a really strong, clean mineral note.  It was light and fresh and just the kind of thing that I would reach for on a screaming hot summer's day.  It's not going to blow your mind, but it does have its subtle charms.

I have recently met the acquaintance the man and wife importing team at Vino z Czech, which is one of the few (and possibly only) importing companies in the US bringing wines from the Czech Republic here.  They sent me all of the white wines in their portfolio (as free samples, in the interest of full disclosure), and I will be writing about those wines, as well as writing more about their company and Czech wine in general, very soon.  Two of the wines they sent me, though, were made from Welschriesling grown in the region of Moravia in the southeastern part of the Czech Republic.  The first wine was the 2011 Spielberg Welschriesling, which can be purchased for around $20 a bottle here.  In the glass, the wine was a medium lemon gold color.  The nose was moderately intense with aromas of white pear, golden apple, chalk and a touch of white flowers.  On the palate the wine was on the lighter side of medium with fairly high acidity.  There were flavors of lemon, green apple, pear and a touch of lees.  It finished with a strong steely, chalky minerality.  Right out of the bottle, the wine was lean, sharp and bright, but as it opens up, the flavor profile shifts from the sharp lemon to more of the soft white fruits.  It stays light and crisp the whole time, though, and is very nice.

The second Vino z Czech Welschriesling was the 2011 Galant, also from Moravia, which retails for around $27 per bottle (about $24 with the case discount through their online retailer). You do have to really read the back labels with these wines since all of them look very similar to one another.  Vino z Czech is a kind of umbrella brand that these guys are using, but all of the wines that they put out are from individual producers.  Spielberg and Galant are two of the producers that they are working with, and the producer information is usually found on the foil cap and the back labels of these wines.  In the glass, this wine was a medium lemon gold color.  The nose was fairly intense with aromas of white pear, orange peel, pineapple, Meyer lemon and cantaloupe.  On the palate the wine was medium bodied with fairly high acidity.  It was dry with flavors of white pear, lemon water, golden apple and river stones.  Like the Hungarian wine above, this wine was subtle and delicate.  My tasting note calls it "a light, lean wine with quiet citrus and white fruit wrapped around a clean, subtle mineral core."  It wasn't as sharp and austere as its fellow countryman, but was still bright and zippy.  It is just a lovely little wine that's shy and a little flirty at the same time.




The final wine that I tried was the 2006 Kracher Beerenauslese from the Burgenland region of Austria.  This wine is made from 70% Welschriesling and 30% Chardonnay grapes that have been botrytized, and it cost about $25 for a half bottle (from my friends at the Spirited Gourmet). In the glasss the wine was a medium bronze gold color.  The nose was intensely aromatic with beautiful aromas of honey, orange marmalade, pineapple, grapefruit, and mango.  On the palate the wine was on the fuller side of medium with fairly high acidity.  It was very sweet with flavors of honey, candied pineapple, grapefruit curd, and orange marmalade.  It had a curious bitter citrus pith kind of finish that was a bit unpleasant and unwelcome.  It's a very good wine, but it really wasn't anything exceptionally exciting, though it is a decent value.  Welschriesling isn't much of a blockbuster grape and I found that I enjoyed its subtle delicacy more in dry table wine form than in this more concentrated style.  It felt a little bit like if the cute librarian you had a crush on showed up one day in a leather mini skirt and a tube top.  She's still a lovely woman, but she doesn't strike your fancy in quite the same way.

Roter Veltliner - Niederösterreich, Austria

I suppose when you decide to write about a grape called Roter Veltliner, it's probably best to go ahead and address the elephant in the room before going any further: no, Roter Veltliner is not related to Grüner Veltliner (or at least not very closely).  This seems difficult to believe given the similarities of their names, but in 1998, an Austrian research team was able to show that not only were Grüner Veltliner and Roter Veltliner not related to one another, but further that Roter Veltliner actually seems to be the more important of the two cultivars in terms of genetic history and parentage (citation 1 below).  Today I'd like to take a closer look at the Roter Veltliner grape and its little family circle.

Grüner Veltliner is certainly more widely available, widely grown and widely hailed than Roter Veltliner, but it has very limited family connections with other Austrian grape varieties.  Grüner is the offspring of Savagnin/Traminer and an obscure grape called St. Georgen-Rebe, which was discovered in an overgrown patch in an abandoned lot in Austria (source).  If there are any other grapes that Grüner has a first-degree relationship with, I have not come across them in any of the literature.  Roter Veltliner, on the other hand, is a key part of what is commonly known as the "Veltliner family," which Grüner is actually not a member of.  The family relationships break down like this:

- Roter Veltliner crossed with Savagnin to create Rotgipfler (which makes Rotgipfler and Grüner Veltliner half-siblings since they share Savagnin as a parent)
- Roter Veltliner also crossed with Silvaner (which is itself an offspring of Savagnin and Österreichisch weiß) to create Neuburger and Frühroter Veltliner
- Frühroter Veltliner was crossed with Grauer Portugieser (which is the pink-berried form of Blauer Portugieser) to create Jubiläumsrebe

Wine Grapes reports that Roter Veltliner likely crossed with a close relative of Traminer/Savagnin to create Zierfandler, but the paper that they cite for support for this doesn't seem to mention Zierfandler at all (though it is in German, and I could be missing it [link immediately begins to download PDF]).  Furthermore, in the 1998 paper referenced above, the authors specifically say "in contrast to previous assumptions...no close genetic relationship between Rotgipfler and Zierfandler could be detected."  If the two grapes shared a common parent, you would expect them to have between 50 and 100% similar DNA, but this study indicates that they could find no such similarity between the two.  The lead author on the Wine Grapes referenced paper is actually also an author on the 1998 paper mentioned above (as well as the lead author on a follow-up paper in 2000, citation 2 below, which also doesn't mention Zierfandler but which traces the Veltliner family tree pretty thoroughly), so it seems odd that he'd not include those findings in either of the papers I've cited but would in the German paper cited by WG.  Since I can't find any published results which show a first degree relationship between Zierfandler and Roter Veltliner or Rotgipfler, and since the papers I've read certainly would have performed the analysis to check for a relationship, I feel OK in saying that there probably isn't one.

Some of you may still be puzzling over the fact that there is no relationship between Roter Veltliner and Grüner Veltliner despite their similar sounding names.  Since Grüner means "green"(and Grüner's berries are green)  and Roter means "red" (and Roter's berries are red) we should be able to find some link between the two grapes through the word "Veltliner," right?  Unfortunately, it isn't totally clear just where the "Veltliner" part of the name comes from.  Many believe that it comes from the word "Veltlin," which is the German word for "Valtellina," which is a valley in northern Lombardia in Italy that borders Switzerland.  The story goes that Grüner Veltliner was named for this valley because it was introduced from there by the Romans.  The problem with this is that the name only seems to  appear in print after 1855 and prior to that, the grape was called Weißgipfler or Grüner Muskateller (despite the fact that it is not related to the Muscat family either).  If the Veltliner were a reference to a Roman origin, it should be traceable further back than that through the historical record, but it doesn't seem to be.  This piece gives some interesting history, but it seems that the answer to the origin of the Veltliner name is still a mystery (though it is worth nothing that all of this research was done for Grüner and not Roter Veltliner, which is apparently not popular enough to warrant this kind of scholarship on its own).

Grüner Veltliner is easily the most widely planted grape in Austria, covering just over 42,000 acres of land in Austria.  Roter Veltliner, by contrast, is only planted on about 640 acres in Austria and is in fact more widely planted in Slovakia, where it covers nearly 900 acres of land.  As you might expect, wines made from it are considerably harder to find than wines made from Grüner, but I was able to find a bottle of the 2009 Ecker Eckhof Roter Veltliner from my friends at the Spirited Gourmet for around $20.  In the glass the wine was a medium silvery lemon color.  The nose was fairly intense with lemon and lime citrus aromas along with some green apple and a touch of apricot.  On the palate the wine was medium bodied with fairly high acidity.  There were flavors of lemon, green apple, lime peel, and lees with a mouthwatering, stony mineral finish.  It was bright, zippy and tart but with nice body and complexity as well.  I thoroughly enjoyed it and found myself disappointed that there weren't more examples around that I could try.  It's definitely something I'll be keeping an eye out for in the future.

1) Sefc, KM, Steinkellner, H, Glossl, J, Kampfer, S, & Regner, F.  1998.  Reconstruction of a grapevine pedigree by microsatellite analysis.  Theoretical and Applied Genetics.  97, pp 227-231

2) Regner, F, Sefc, K, Glossl, J & Steinkellner, H.  2000.  Parentage analysis and pedigree reconstruction of vine cultivars using microsatellite markers.  Acta Horticulturae.  528, pp 133-138,

Roter Traminer (Gewürztraminer) - Südsteiermark, Austria

Let me start off by saying that, yes, today's post is about Gewürztraminer and, no, I don't consider Gewürztraminer a Fringe Wine.  I'm writing about Gewürztraminer because the bottle of wine that I bought wasn't labeled Gewürztraminer, it was labeled Roter Traminer and, well, let's just back up a bit and work our way up to it.

When I was doing research for my two Savagnin posts, I discovered that Savagnin is also known as Traminer and that Gewürztraminer is a mutation of a pink-skinned mutation of Traminer known as Roter Traminer.  In yesterday's post on Malvasia Nera, we talked a little bit about the fact that almost all grapes that are cultivated for wine are not actually a single grape, but rather a number of grapes that have mutated to various extents, but which are all genetically similar enough that we consider them to belong to a single family that, usually, ends up marching under a single grape-name's banner.  There isn't really a single Cabernet Sauvignon grape, for example, but rather a variety of clonal variants that have differences in leaf shape, cluster morphology and climactic tolerances, but which all share enough similar DNA that we can consider them as a single grape.  Further, the wines produced from these clones are similar enough to one another that we have no problem thinking about all of them under a single heading and group them all as "Cabernet Sauvignon" without any real mental anguish about the whole thing.

Some grapes, like Pinot Noir, mutate a lot and there are a lot of clonal variants available.  There are fierce arguments between Pinot Noir growers and wine drinkers about the relative merits and demerits of different clones both in a general sense and in more terroir specific situations. Noted ampelographer Pierre Galet has indicated that there are at least 50 clones of Pinot Noir that are approved for use in France, as opposed to only about 25 for Cabernet Sauvignon, and it is thought that poor clonal selection may have contributed to the lackluster wines coming out of Burgundy in the 1970's and 80's.  Some of the clonal variants produced very large crops, but the quality of the juice and, by extension, of the wine was considered to be much inferior to other clones which did not produce as prolifically, but which made a higher quality wine.

Which brings up an interesting question for me: at what point has a vine differentiated itself enough from the original plant to be considered a new variety?  As mentioned in yesterday's post, the skin color of the grape seems to be an automatic factor, as we have no trouble conceptualizing Pinot Blanc, Pinot Gris and Pinot Noir as separate grapes, even though their DNA is so closely matched as to be nearly identical to one another.  Red grapes, white grapes and pink grapes are very different visually and make very different wines, so there's no real controversy with setting that as a determining factor.  The case for differentiating Pinot Meunier is a little more complicated, as you can read about in my post on that grape here.  The mutation that caused Pinot Meunier was severe and it resulted in a chimerical plant whose genetic code is easily differentiated from the original Pinot Noir, even though the only real tell-tale sign at the macroscopic level is a downy coating on the leaves.  Though I'm sure a very experienced taster could do it, I would have an incredibly hard time differentiating between wines made from Pinot Meunier and Pinot Noir in a blind tasting environment.  For Meunier, the case for differentiation is more subtle than for the other Pinot family members, but the difference is observable at least at a microscopic level.

But we're not here to discuss the different limbs on the Pinot family tree, but rather to take a look at a family with a similar history, the Traminer famly.  Like the Pinot family, the Traminer family is very old and has been subject to a number of mutations throughout its history.  It is unclear which member of the Traminer family came first, but the smart money seems to be on White Traminer (Savagnin), as it has the largest number of clonal variants, which is usually an indication of a long history of cultivation.  The family is named for the village of Tramin in the Südtirol region of Trentino-Alto Adige in northern Italy, where the grape is thought to have originated.  It is thought to have moved north to Austria and Germany where, at some point, one of the vines mutated into a pink-skinned grape that came to be known as Roter Traminer, or "red traminer."  Later, this Roter Traminer mutated yet again, but this time the mutation didn't affect the color of the grape, but rather its aroma and taste profile.  Mutations like this are not unheard of and the specific name for them is a musqué mutation.

And here is where the confusion sets in.   All three of the major Traminer mutations are cultivated to some extent, but in Germany and Austria, the name on the bottle is no real help as to what is actually inside.  In the German speaking countries, white Traminer is simply called Weisser Traminer, unless you are in the Styria region of Austria where it is known as Gelber Traminer (which is, confusingly, also a synonym for Gewürztraminer in other regions of Austria), while in France, Savagnin is generally the accepted nomenclature.  It's with Roter Traminer and Gewürztraminer that the fun really starts, because in Germany and Austria, the members of the Traminer family are only differentiated by skin color so Roter Traminer and Gewürztraminer are considered to be the same grape.  The VIVC, which I use a lot to tease these puzzles out, is based in Germany and follows the same convention, considering the two grapes to be identical.  As a result, if you buy a bottle from Austria or Germany labeled Roter Traminer, you won't be able to tell whether what is in the bottle is Gewürztraminer or Roter Traminer.  The French do differentiate between the two grapes, using the Gewürztraminer name for the musqué most of the time, though occasionally using Savagnin Rosé Aromatique, and using the Savagnin Rosé or Klevener de Heiligenstein (in Alsace) names for Roter Traminer.

So we have a conundrum.  Is the musqué mutation a significant enough change to consider Roter Traminer and Gewürztraminer as two different grapes, or should Gewürztraminer merely be considered a clonal variant of Roter Traminer?  The French seem to favor the former approach, while the Germans and Austrians seem to prefer the latter.  If our sole criteria is skin color, then we would have to follow the German approach, as Roter Traminer and Gewürztraminer have the same pinkish skin color.  I have to say that this approach seems to be lacking, as it feels to me that if the wines made from each of the clonal variants are profoundly distinctive from one another, as seems to be the case here, then we should consider the grapes separately and individually.  The problem with that stance is that it's a slippery slope, and it may be difficult in some cases to tell what counts as profoundly distinctive.  The Brunello clone of Sangiovese is a good example, as it makes wines that are distinctive from other Sangiovese based wines, but it may be overstating the case to call them profoundly distinctive.

It's a difficult question, but unfortunately for me, it's not one that I have to answer for myself in this particular situation.  I found a bottle of the 2003 Lackner-Tinnacher Roter Traminer at Curtis Liquors for about $30 and bought it hoping that it would be made from the non-musqué version of the grape.  In the glass, the wine was a medium lemon gold color with some greenish tints.  As I lowered my nose into the glass, I knew immediately that what I had was undoubtedly Gewürztraminer.  The nose was very aromatic and flowery with rose petals, ripe peaches and honey.  On the palate the wine was on the fuller side of medium with medium acidity and a bit of residual sugar.  There were flavors of juicy, ripe peaches with honey and honeysuckle flower and a bitter rose petal kind of flavor on the finish.  Given that the wine was 8 years old, it was still very fresh and alive, which is a little unusual in my experience, as Gewürztraminer based wines tend to fall apart fairly quickly.  I tried my hardest to believe that it was plain old Roter Traminer and not Gewürztraminer, but there really is no denying the distinctive aroma profile.  I enjoyed this wine a lot and though it was a little on the pricey side, it was very well made and had a lot of complexity to it.  I hope one day to cross paths with a non-musqué Roter Traminer based wine for comparison's sake, and when I do, I'll still have a lot of things to think about.

I guess a question that some readers may have is whether the distinction is really even that important.  It's certainly important to me because the scope of this blog is laid out in a particular way and the exact grape or grapes that comprise a bottle of wine matter because it's a big part of how I determine what wines I'm going to discuss here.  But does it matter in a more general sense?  There's an anecdote about the late Joe Dressner of Louis/Dressner imports in which someone asks him exactly how much Grenache is used in a particular bottle and his response was "however much you want there to be."  The implication, of course, is that it hardly matters in a general sense what grapes are used to make the wine so long as the wine is good.  Which is true, of course, to an extent.  Is it really relevant how much Cabernet Sauvignon or Petit Verdot is in a bottle of Chateau Latour?  The wine stands or falls based on how good it is, and knowing the exact proportions of the blend is kind of irrelevant in deciding whether or not you enjoy the wine.

This isn't always the case, though, since you are not always afforded an opportunity to taste a wine before you buy it.  If you are a big fan of Grenache but don't like Syrah or Mourvedre (for whatever reason), knowing the proportions of the blend can help you decide whether you want to invest the money in trying a bottle you've not had before.  It gets even more important with varietally bottled wines, as the sole basis of your decision may be the name of the grape on the label.  I am always a fan of having as much information as possible on the bottle so that the consumer has as much information as he or she needs to make a decision on a purchase.  In this particular case, I don't know what Roter Traminer tastes like, but from what I've read, it's very different from Gewürztraminer and I do know that there are a lot of people who are not fans of Gewürztraminer's explosive perfume and somewhat bitter flavor.  Those consumers, even if they are very knowledgeable, may find themselves in the position of having to take a guess, as I did, and they may not be happy with the results.  Yes, there is always the option of talking to the seller, but in cases like this, it isn't always clear even to the very well informed staff member exactly what's in the bottle.

As mentioned above, I think that if there is a significant difference between how two different clonal variants taste and smell, there should be some distinction made so that the consumer can make a fully informed decision.  As you can probably tell from this post and others on the site, I don't believe in too much information and am a big believer in precision not for its own sake but for the sake of aiding decision-making in making what can be a costly decision.  We aim for this kind of precision, for better or for worse, in labeling many wines geographically, and I personally feel like the grape used to make the wine is as important as the piece of land where the grape was grown and would like to see the same kind of dedication to specificity employed in varietal labeling.

St. Laurent - Burgenland, Austria

Today we head back into Austria to take a look at the St. Laurent grape.  Like seemingly every grape that we take a look at here, St. Laurent's past is somewhat murky and a little controversial, though recent research has helped to shed some light on certain parts of its parentage and history.

The biggest question for St. Laurent has always been trying to figure out just what its relationship is to Pinot Noir.  One of the accepted synonyms for St. Laurent is Pinot St. Laurent, which naturally led some people to conclude that the two grapes were related.  Some people believed that St. Laurent was actually a seedling of Pinot Noir, meaning that both parents are Pinot Noir and that St. Laurent was grown from a seed within a Pinot Noir grape.  Other sources, most notably the inimitable French ampelographer Pierre Galet, believed that St. Laurent was completely unrelated to Pinot Noir and was some bizarre import from Alsace.  Genetic testing was done and in a paper published in 2000 in the American Journal of Enology and Viticulture, the researchers concluded that it was very likely that St. Laurent is actually a crossing between Pinot Noir and some other unidentified vine.  Like its parent, St. Laurent mutates very easily, so the fact that the researchers were able to pin down a relationship between two very unstable DNA sets is pretty amazing, especially considering that some sources believe that St. Laurent has existed for nearly 400 years, which is a lot of time for mutations to happen.

Galet did have part of the story right, though, as he surmised that the grape came into Germany and Austria via Alsace.  The evidence seems to bear this out, as there are references to the St. Laurent grape in southern Alsace dating back to 1850, and the grape's entry into Germany can be traced precisely to 1870 when a German grower purchased some St. Laurent vines from a viticulturist in Alsace.  Some sources presume that the grape is named St. Laurent for the town of the same name near Bordeaux, but since there isn't really any Pinot Noir or Pinot offspring grown in the region, that explanation doesn't make a lot of sense.  It is more likely that the grape is named for St. Laurentius Day on August 10, which is approximately when the grapes go through veraison.  This is significant because it is between 10 and 12 days sooner than Pinot Noir goes through the same process, meaning that St. Laurent ripens sooner than Pinot Noir and is thus more suited to cooler regions with shorter growing seasons, like Germany and parts of Austria.

St. Laurent isn't grown in enormous quantities anywhere, but it has found a home in a few different places.  The vine covers about 600 hectares of land in Germany with the best examples coming from the Pfalz region. In Austria, which is perhaps St. Laurent's best known area of cultivation, the vine covers about 800 hectares of land.  Perhaps more importantly for Austria, though, is that St. Laurent is one of the parents of Zweigelt, Austria's signature red grape (the other parent is Blaufränkish).  Interestingly, St. Laurent is the most widely grown red grape in the Czech Republic, covering almost 10% of their total vineyard area (just over 1700 hectares in total).  There are smaller plantings in New Zealand and Canada as well.  The grape is finicky in the vineyard, as it buds very early making early spring frosts especially dangerous, and is susceptible to coulure (poor berry set) and rot (despite the grapes' thick skins, the bunches are very compact and moisture that gets into the bunch has a hard time getting back out, leading to rot).

I was able to pick up a bottle of the 2008 Zantho St. Laurent from my friends at Curtis Liquors for about $15.  In the glass, the wine was a deep purple ruby color that was nearly opaque at the core with a narrow crimson rim.  The nose was nicely aromatic with savory, meaty aromas, sweaty leather, Asian spice and plummy fruit.  On the palate, the wine was on the fuller side of medium with fairly high acidity and low tannins.  There were earthy meat and wet leather flavors with black plum and stewed cherry fruit.  There were also notes of Asian spice and black pepper.  As the wine opens up, the meaty, savory aromas dissipate a bit and the fruit flavors step more into the forefront and the fruit character shifts to more towards the cherry end of the spectrum.  Therry Theise, in one of his wine catalogs, describes St. Laurent as "Pinot Noir with a 'sauvage' touch," and John Schriener writes that "it comes across as a Pinot Noir wearing hiking boots," both of which pretty much sum up my feeling on the wine as well.  I had actually written in my notes that the wine was like a brooding, meaty Pinot Noir but denser and darker.  For fans of gamier, meatier Pinot Noirs, St. Laurent is a can't miss, especially considering the price that most of them sell for.

Zierfandler - Thermenregion, Austria

Today we wrap up our little tour of the Thermenregion of Austria by taking a look at the Zierfandler grape.  A few days ago, we took a brief look at this grape in its blended form from the village of Gumpoldskirchen, while yesterday we took a look at its frequent companion and blending partner, Rotgipfler.

Unlike Rotgipfler, Zierfandler's parentage is not 100% certain.  It was long thought that Zierfandler's parents were the same as Rotgipfler's (namely a cross between Roter Veltliner and Traminer), but that doesn't seem to be the case, and in fact, neither of Zierfandler's parents have been identified to date.  The most common alternate name for Zierfandler is Spätrot, which means "late-red" due to the tendency of the grape skins to take on a reddish tinge the longer they hang on the vine.  When Zierfandler is blended with Rotgipfler, as it often is, the blend is usually given the name Spätrot-Rotgipfler, for reasons that should be pretty self-evident.  Zierfandler is considered to be the nobler of the two grapes by the critics who are paid to make those kinds of pronouncements, so you can take it with the same grain of salt that you reserve for any broad, sweeping generalizations that involve something as particular as taste.

Zierfandler ripens very late, later even than Rotgipfler, which can be either a good thing or a bad thing.  In cooler years, the grapes may not reach full ripeness, but in special years, botrytis (the good kind) may have a chance to set in (the grape is fairly thin-skinned to boot). Since it tends to retain a good deal of its acidity throughout its growing cycle, it can make very interesting wines from nobly rotten or late-harvested grapes.  There are purportedly less than 100 ha of land devoted to the vine in the Thermenregion of Austria and only scant plantings in other European countries like Hungary (where it is known as Cirfandli) and Slovenia (where it is known as Zerjavina), so I would imagine that late-harvest and botrytis-affected wines are very rare and hard to come by (with commensurate price-tags, I'm sure).

There's an interesting theory out there that Zierfandler may have inadvertently been the source of the US name for the grape Zinfandel, though the two grapes are completely unrelated.  The story goes that George Gibbs brought shipload of vines into the US in the 1820's and he called some of the vines in that shipment "Black Zinfardel of Hungary."  Now, there is no grape that goes by the name of Black Zinfardel of Hungary, so it's tough to know exactly what he was talking about, but we do know that the shipment came from the Austrian imperial Nursery in Vienna, located about 30 miles north of the Thermenregion, where Zierfandler finds its home.  The imperial nursery was also known at the time to have cuttings of a grape known as Crljenak Kaštelanski, which is the old Croatian name for the grape currently known as Zinfandel.  What is thought to have happened is that the Zinfandel vines were sent over and the label for Zierfandler vines somehow ended up on them.

It's certainly possible that the Zierfandler we're talking about here today was the culprit in this case of mistaken identity, but it doesn't seem likely.  Miles Lambert-Gocs has a theory that the Zinfandel name actually came from some of the alternate names for Blaufränkish.  Blaufränkish is one of those grapes that is cultivated in a wide variety of regions and thus has a lot of synonyms (83 are listed in the VIVC database).  David Darlington, in his Zin: The History and Mystery of Zinfandel, quotes a Lambert-Gocs article (which Lambert-Gocs has summarized to some extent here) where he states that one of Blaufränkish's known synonyms in the 1800's was Blauer Zierfahndler and, further, it is still known as Cierny Zierfandler in Slovakia.  It is much more likely that what happened was that some Blaufränkish was being sent to the US and either the labels got switched in transit or the vines were misidentified after they got here.  It may be possible that these synonyms for Blaufränkish were derived from our Zierfandler, keeping the etymological chain alive, but it's unlikely, considering that Zierfahndler (and Zierfandler) is also a synonym for the Silvaner grape, which is much more widespread and which has been around since at least 1659, meaning that there's a better chance that the name Zierfandler is derived from Silvaner than the other way around.

Anyway, we're here to talk about Zierfandler, not Zinfandel, so let's get back on track.  As mentioned above, Zierfandler isn't widely grown by any stretch of the imagination, but one of the estates that does deal with it is Weingut Stadlmann.  The Stadlmann estate has been in the wine game since its foundation in 1780 by Johann Stadlmann.  The estate and the winemaking responsibilities have been maintained and passed down through seven generations.  As of 2007, the estate has been biodynamically certified by Lacon in Austria.  They produce a few single-vineyard bottlings from their Mandel-Höh, Tagelsteiner and Höfen sites, which are home to 45 year old vines, as well as their Igeln site, which is houses 20 year old vines.  Overall, they have about 13 hectares of land under vine.  

I was kindly sent a sample of their 2010 Anninger bottling, which is their entry level Zierfandler, by Monika Caha Selections.  They tell me this wine retails for about $16 and is currently available in CA, NY and NJ, though they hope to have distribution in about 20 more states by next year.  In the glass, the wine had a medium lemon gold color.  The nose was very reserved here with some lemon citrus and apple flavors, but not much.  It didn't really open up much as it came to room temperature or with a day open in the fridge, which apparently isn't all that unusual for this grape.  On the palate, the wine was just on the fuller side of medium with fairly high acid.  It was dry with flavors of apple, lemon-lime citrus, ripe grapefruit, and honeysuckle flowers with a bit of a bitter, lemon peel kind of finish.  The wine also had a nice, refreshing kind of minerality to it.  The wine is aged for four months on the lees, so there was a broad, almost creamy flavor profile here that was nicely undercut by the bright fruit flavors and zippy acidity.  If you served a nice Austrian Riesling with a twist of lemon in it, you probably wouldn't be too far off from the flavor profile here.  

Rotgipfler - Thermenregion, Austria

Yesterday we took a look at a wine from Austria called Gumpoldskirchen that is made from Rotgipfler and Zierfandler grapes.  Today and tomorrow we're going to take a closer look at each of those grapes, starting with Rotgipfler today.

Rotgipfler is a white wine grape that is thought to be indigenous to the Thermenregion of Austria (located in the eastern part of the country, just south of Vienna), though Philipp Blom, in his The Wines of Austria, indicates that it may actually be from Styria originally, just south of Thermenregion.  Its parentage has been confirmed as a spontaneous crossing between Traminer (aka Savagnin) and Roter Veltliner (Sefc, K.M., Steinkellner, H., Glossl, J., Kampfer, S., Regner, F. (1998). Reconstruction of a grapevine pedigree by microsatellite analysis.  Theoretical and Applied Genetics. (97) 227-231).  The Roter Veltliner link may lead you to believe that this grape is also related to the Austrian specialty Grüner Veltliner, which is sometimes known by the name Weissgipfler, but it turns out that that's probably not true (there has been no proven link between Roter Veltliner and Grüner Veltliner).  The name Rotgipfler has something to do with redness somewhere on the vine (rot being the German word for red), though different sources seem to disagree about precisely where this redness is occurring.  Some say that it is the tips of the leaves that are red, some say it is the shoots that are red, while the winery's fact sheet seems to give a literal translation of "red shoot-apex," whatever that means. Something on the vine that is not the grapes is red, that much we know for sure, and that's where the grape's name comes from.

It is considered something of an also-ran in the Thermenregion by outside observers, with nearly every critical source starting out their evaluation of the grape by unfavorably comparing it to its running-mate, Zierfandler.  Jancis Robinson (in The Oxford Companion to Wine) describes it as "the marginally less noble of the two," while Blom is less equivocal in his statement that it "is certainly the less noble of the two."  Robinson offers no support for her declaration of the grape's inferiority, while Blom's reasons seem to be linked more to the fact that the grape is fairly difficult in the vineyard.  He points to the grape's habit of ripening late (though it still ripens earlier than Zierfandler, a fact passed over in silence by Blom), its fussiness in terms of its soil and climate preferences, and its sensitivity to wind-chill and botrytis before concluding: "it can produce some full-bodied wines with marked acidity, golden colour, and characteristic aromas of clementines and almonds.  Often, though, it produces light and fresh wines that are not remarkable in terms of sophistication and complexity."

The Johanneshof Reinisch Winery

Whatever the critics believe, the vine is planted on pretty much the same amount of land as Zierfandler in the Thermenregion (just over 100 hectares), and the local winemakers seem to think that it's good enough to stand on its own.  Johanneshof Reinisch is one of those local producers.  They are a family owned estate that has been producing wine in this region for four generations, starting with a meager half hectare in 1923 that grew to the over 40 ha spread (broken up over several regions) that they farm today.  The majority of their plantings are red wine grapes, with about 65% of their vineyard area dedicated to red grapes (especially Pinot Noir and St. Laurent) and the remaining 35% to white.  A brand new winemaking facility was built in 1995 and the winery continues to walk the line between tradition (large neutral oak barrels and natural fermentation) and modernism (temperature controlled stainless steel and high-tech mechanical sorting and pressing equipment).

I was sent a sample bottle of the 2010 Johanneshof Reinisch Rotgipfler by the good people at Circo Vino.  They tell me this bottle retails for about $20 and is available in the NY, NJ, IL, CA, FL, OR, and WA markets with the possibility of Massachusetts distribution in the near future.  Some batches of this wine undergo spontaneous wild yeast fermentation, but all batches are kept on their lees for about four months after fermentation stops and the batches are blended together and bottled.  In the glass, this wine was a pale silvery lemon color with greenish tints.  The nose was nicely aromatic with lemony citrus, ripe pear, green apple and white flowers.  The wine's body was on the lighter side of medium with medium acidity.  There was nice lemony and light apple fruit and a very clean, very refreshing minerality that kept me reaching for the glass.  This wine made me long for the warmer days of summer (which I don't often do) and had me wistfully looking out my window at the gloomy Boston October I found myself in.  Fans of lighter Italian Pinot Grigio will find a lot to like here.  I kept imagining myself eating raw oysters on the half-shell with just a twist of lemon on them while I was drinking this. It's not the most complex wine you'll ever drink, but it's incredibly refreshing and there's always a spot in my cellar for wines like that.

Gumpoldskirchen - Thermenregion, Austria

The Village of Gumpoldskirchen

Today's post is a first for Fringe Wine.  The bottle that I will be looking at today was kindly provided as a sample by Circo Vino, an importer located in Evanston, Illinois, and is the first free sample that I've ever been sent.  They sent two bottles my way, this one and a varietal Rotgipfler which I will be examining tomorrow.  I know there's a lot of hullabaloo surrounding wine writers/critics/bloggers and the acknowledgement of free stuff, so I just want to put it right here up top.  This bottle was a free sample.  That said, I plan to evaluate it exactly the same way as if I paid retail price for it.

The title of today's post, Gumpoldskirchen, doesn't refer to a grape name, but rather to a place.  That place is the village of Gumpoldskirchen, located in the Thermenregion of eastern Austria (so named for the many spas or thermen found here), about 20 miles south of Vienna.  This region's climate is marked by hot summers, cold winters, and moderate rainfall.  The soils are littered with ancient marine fossils and, in general, are marked by heavy loam, gravel and clay.  This village was one of the shining stars of Austria and was at the forefront of quality production in the 18th and 19th Centuries.  Even into the early 20th Century, the wine from here was so well thought of that it was served at the wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip in 1947 and, further, was served at a 1961 summit meeting in Vienna between president John F. Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Krushchev.  The wines made within the Gumpoldskirchen district were known as Gumpoldskirchen Königswein, or the King's wine, a reflection of their reputation and lofty status.

And then disaster struck.  In 1985, a few wineries in Austria were caught adding diethylene glycol, one of the main ingredients in antifreeze, to their wines in order to boost their body and sweetness.  The Austrian classification system is very similar to Germany's and is based on the sugar content of the grape must prior to fermentation. It was (and is) illegal to add any sugar to the fermenting must in order to boost your wine into a higher classification tier. The problem that the Austrian producers had was that many of them had contracts that specified that they had to provide a certain amount of wine from each tier to their buyers and when a series of cool vintages struck in the early 1980's, the grapes weren't able to ripen fully and the producers were stuck with an excess of wine at the lower tiers and a dearth of wine at the higher ones.  Simply adding sugar would have raised the overall sweetness level of the wine (illegally), but the body of the finished wine would be thinner and it would be more apparent than some doctoring had taken place.  Diethylene glycol tastes sweet and is viscous, meaning that if it were added to the must, the wine would taste sweeter and have the unctuous texture that consumers would expect to find in wines in those quality tiers.  Diethylene glycol also happens to be toxic and when the adulteration was discovered and brought to light in 1985, it ignited a huge scandal that had a devastating effect on the Austrian wine industry.  Exports dropped 90% virtually overnight and did not reach their pre-1985 levels until 2001.

The village of Gumpoldskirchen was not directly implicated in the scandal, but the tarring brush was wide and the wine industry across all of Austria suffered greatly and equally for the transgressions of a very few.  It has recovered, as has the rest of the Austrian wine industry, over the past few years, though it would be difficult to say that the current fame of Gumpoldskirchen in particular matches its illustrious past.  Gottfried Schellmann made wines in the Gumpoldskirchen region for over forty years, long enough to experience both the zenith and nadir of Austria's vinous reputation.  He owned nine hectares of vineyard land scattered throughout the Gumpoldskirchen region and was a driving force in attempting to elevate the reputation of these wines to their former glory.  He is quoted as saying "the pinnacle has not yet been reached in the Thermenregion," and one can imagine that the statement is not tied to any particular time, but is rather intended as a motto for ever striving to greater things.

Fred Loimer

And then there's Fred Loimer, a well-regarded grower and winemaker from the Kamptal region of Austria.  Fred ventured into the Thermenregion in 2002 looking for new challenges and new opportunities in the different climate and with the different indigenous grapes that the Thermenregion offers.  Fred and Gottfried partnered up in 2002 and when Gottfried passed away in 2005, Fred stepped into an ownership role with the Schellmann properties and has continued to make wines from their estate fruit.  All of the vineyards in the Gumpoldsregion that are bottled under the Schellmann label are biodynamically farmed and Fred is one of the founding members of the "Respect" association of biodynamic farmers in the region.

There are several different wines in the Schellmann portfolio, but perhaps the most interesting is the basic Gumpoldskirchen cuveé.  The wine is based on the Michsatz, a traditional field blend from the region that consists of Rotgipfler, Zierfandler, Muskateller, Traminer (our old friend Savagnin), and Riesling.  In the next few days, I'll be posting more about Rotgipfler and Zierfandler as I was also generously given varietal bottlings of these two grapes.  Muskateller is the Austrian word for the local member of the Muscat family of grapes, and it will also likely get its own mention here before too long.

The bulk of the Gumpoldskirchen cuveé is made up of Rotgipfler and Zierfandler, a classic blend in the Thermenregion that is called Spätrot Rotgipfler when they are the only two grapes used.  According to the winery's fact sheet (in German, as the English version contains a typo here), this bottling has a touch of Muskateller and Traminer, but no Riesling in it.  The grapes are crushed and left to macerate with the skins for a short period of time before being pressed.  Fermentation takes place in both stainless steel and large, neutral oak barrels, where the wines are matured for a further eight months after fermentation ends.

The wine I was offered was the 2008 Gumpoldskirchen cuveé, which I am told retails for about $25.  The wine is not currently available in Massachusetts, but should be by the end of the year.  It is available in NY, NJ, IL, CA, FL, OR, and WA.  In the glass, the wine was a medium lemon color.  The nose was nicely aromatic with juicy pear, ripe grapefruit, honeysuckle flower and a distinct Muscat-like peachy, flowery smell.  I am a sucker for intensely aromatic white wines and this was pushing all the right buttons for me.  On the palate, the wine was medium bodied with fairly high acidity.  There were racy grapefruit and orange citrus flavors with honeysuckle flowers and a bitter, pithy finish.  There was a distinctive chalky kind of minerality to the wine that I don't always find welcome (hello there Chasselas), but here, the primary fruit flavors were well defined enough that the chalkiness wasn't to the wine's detriment (whether it's to the wine's benefit is a more personal question that you should probably answer for yourself).  As the wine warmed and opened up, nectarine stonefruit started to become more apparent and the Muscat-like character calmed down a bit.  The wine gives the sense of being perhaps a bit off-dry, but the residual sugar content is purportedly only 2.9 g/l, so it's probably just the ripe fruit flavors here that are contributing to the illusion.  Overall, this was a very enjoyable wine that is definitely suited for fans of interesting, complex, aromatic whites like Muscat or Riesling.

Grüner Veltliner - Austria and Finger Lakes, New York

Grüner Veltliner is one of those grapes that I was very unsure about for this site.  Yes, it's relatively obscure to the wine novice, but it is definitely a grape on the rise right now.  A few years ago, it was an interesting curiosity that popped up every now and again on a wine list or at a tasting, but lately I can't think of a single wine shop I've been in in the past year that wasn't carrying a bottle of Grüner.  I thought about it and ultimately decided that the world of wine was so vast that I could pass this one over.  My resolve loosened, though, when I found a bottle of sparkling Grüner and it dissolved completely when I came across a bottle on my recent trip to the Finger Lakes region of New York.  So, without futher ado, ladies and gentlemen, let's all welcome Grüner Veltliner to Fringe Wine.

Grüner Veltliner is very popular in Austria where it accounts for somewhere between 32% and 36% of the land under vine (and in some areas it accounts for over 50% of the land under vines).  It is, far and away, Austria's most important and, within the past decade or so, its most esteemed variety.  The name itself means "green grape from the village of Veltlin in the Tirol" and for many years, it was thought to be somehow related to two other grapes grown in Austria with veltliner in their name: Roter Veltliner and Frühroter Veltliner.  In the early 1990's, genetic testing was carried out and the results showed that Grüner Veltliner is not related to either of the other two grapes at all (though Frühroter Veltliner is the offspring of Roter Veltliner and Sylvaner).  The testing did identify one of the parents of Gruner Veltliner to be Traminer (or Savagnin, which we'll get to on this site very soon) but the other parent was unknown. 

In the year 2000, a single very old, very weak vine was discovered in an abandoned pasture in a place called St. Georgen in Austria.  The grape was previously unknown and so was provisionally named St. Georgen-Rebe.  When the land was about to be reclaimed and the vine was being threatened with uprooting in 2005, scientists took some cuttings and some genetic material from the plant and ran some tests.  When the tests came back, it was discovered that this was the other parent of Grüner Veltliner.  It is believed that this was the last surviving St. Georgen-Rebe vine on earth and it was on the verge of dying prior to discovery.  There are currently plans for experimental plots of the rediscovered vine to see what kind of grapes and wine it can produce.  It's pretty amazing, though, how close the world came to never knowing the full parentage of Grüner Veltliner and it certainly makes one wonder about the thousands of vines that have passed into obscurity due to neglect, vine-pulling and/or selective breeding.

In any case, though the vine seems to be native to Austria and is certainly best known in the wines that come from Austria, it is not solely an Austrian phenomenon.  Grüner is the most widely planted grape in Slovakia and the second most widely planted grape in the Czech Republic.  It is found to a lesser extent in Germany and Hungary and is being played around with in the new world throughout the USA and in some parts of New Zealand. 

The overwhelming majority of Grüner Veltliner wines produced are still wines, but Ewald Gruber (producer of the sparkling Zweigelt mentioned here) makes a slightly fizzy version.  I was able to pick up a bottle of this from my friends at Bin Ends on sale for about $10 (it's a NV bottling).  In the glass, the wine was a silvery lemon color with slight effervescence.  The nose here was surprisingly shy for a sparkler with just a hint of apple-y fruit, but it was mostly just a blank.  On the palate, the wine was light bodied with acidity on the higher side of medium.  Like its Zweigelt counterpart, this was definitely more frizzante than fully sparkling and tasted pretty dry, though the winery spec-sheet indicates that there is a whopping 15 grams per liter of residual sugar here.   There were nice flavors of crisp apple and pear with just a little of the white pepper and vegetal matter that makes Grüner so distinctive.  This is almost certainly tank fermented rather than bottle fermented as it's very fruit-forward and friendly (it's also under screwcap for those who are concerned about those kinds of things).  It's an interesting change of pace for a sparkler and an interesting take on the Grüner Veltliner grape.

While recently visiting the Finger Lakes, I remarked to my wife about halfway through the trip that I was surprised that we weren't seeing more Grüner Veltliner out that way.  The very next day we ended up at Dr. Frank's where we were able to try and purchase ($20) the winery's first ever bottling of Grüner Veltliner.  In the glass, the wine had a pale greenish lemon color.  The nose was very aromatic with ripe apples and stone fruit.  At the winery, this has a very distinct celery leaf kind of character to it that wasn't as prominent at home.  On the palate, the wine was on the lighter side of medium with medium acidity.  There was apple and grapefruit flavors along with a bit of pepper in the finish and very nice minerality.  I started to pick up the celery and celery leaf characteristics as the wine opened up a bit and, while that may not sound very appealing in a white wine, it works really well with Grüner.  I drank this wine with a crudites platter and it is a total slam dunk with a lot of vegetable dishes.  It's an exciting wine not just because of the quality but also because it shows the region's potential for this grape.  I don't think Grüner is going to unseat Riesling as the star of the Finger Lakes region, but it's a nice addition to their repertoire and shows the potential for some very interesting wines in the future.

Blauer Portugieser - Weinland, Österreich (Austria)

Let's talk about the Blauer Portugieser grape.  Of the two words in the grape's name, Blauer may seem like the one that needs the most explanation.  Not true.  Blauer simply means "blue" and is a fairly common prefix for German/Austrian grape names (think Blaufränkish or Blauburgunder).  Of course, that may immediately lead to another question: why does a grape called "Portugieser" need a Germanic prefix?  Well, Austria and Germany are the most prolific growers of Portugieser, as it is the third most planted red variety in each of those two countries (it occupies between 4,000 and 5,000 hectares in each).  The vine is also widely spread throughout Eastern Europe and is grown in Croatia, the Czech Republic, Romania, Slovenia, and Hungary, where it is one of the permitted grapes in the Bull's Blood blend.  It was even once widely grown in southwestern France, where it was known as Oporto or Portugais Bleu.  So where does it rank in Portuguese production?  Well, it doesn't.

As far as I can tell, Portugieser isn't actually grown in Portugal at all.  In fact, depending on what sources you use, Portugieser may not have any connection to Portugal whatsoever.  The Austrian Wine website maintains that the grape is native to Portugal and was taken to Austria by the Baron von Fries in 1770.  Most other sources, though, indicate that the grape is native to Austria with no apparent or proven link either to Portugal or to any other Portuguese grape.  The von Fries origin story must be persistent, though, as most of the synonyms for Portugieser incorporate some reference to Portugal: Kékoporto in Hungary, Modrý Portugal in the Czech Republic, Portugaljka in Croatia, etc. (those who are terribly interested can peruse the full list of synonyms here).  I suppose it's possible that wines made from the Portugieser grape reminded the drinkers of wines from Portugal, but that seems unlikely given the grape's reputation for producing pale, light bodied red wines, a far cry from the powerhouse Ports that were likely in circulation in the 18th and 19th Centuries.

Whatever the true origin of the name is, the grape is now widely known as Portugieser and is relatively widely planted, though little of it gets exported.  Mostly this is because the wines made from the grape have a pretty lousy reputation.  The Oxford Companion to Wine writes that Portugieser is a "black grape variety common in both senses of that word in Austria and Germany" which "can taste disconcertingly inconsequential to non-natives."  They further write "such wines are rarely exported, with good reason, and are only rarely worthy of detailed study."  So why does the grape take up so much real estate in these countries?

Well, the main reason is that Blauer Portugieser is really easy to grow.  It is resistant to a wide range of vine diseases, most specifically coulure, or poor fruit set (when the berries are very young, many of them fall off, which is called coulure).  Because of its resistance to this particular affliction, Portugieser is an explosive yielder, sometimes producing as much as 120 hl/ha of juice, or around 7 tons of fruit per acre.  As you might expect, if the vine is allowed to produce to its full potential, the resulting wines are dilute and the grape's naturally low acidity is stretched even thinner.  There are some producers who are trying to produce fine wines from this unappreciated grape by restricting yields, using old vines and barrel-maturing their wine.

To be honest, I'm not at all sure if the maker of the bottle I bought is one of these producers or not.  I tried to go to the producer's website, and, after fighting off the pop-up ads for getting a green card, was unable to understand anything on the site, since the English translation button doesn't seem to work (I took Latin in school so these Germanic languages are pretty opaque to me).  So, we'll just have to go by what's in the bottle.  The wine I was able to find was from Pretterebner and it was from the 2004 vintage.  I picked it up for about $13.  In the glass, the wine was a medium ruby color with a fruity, grape juice kind of nose.  There were also some aromas of plum and red cherry.  On the palate, the wine was medium bodied with no tannins and acidity on the lower side of medium.  It tasted a bit like watered down grape juice with some cherry and raspberry fruit.  As the wine sat in my glass, it started to pick up a kind of rubbery aroma and taste that reminded me of when I was a kid and on really hot days, we would drink water from a garden hose.  The smell and taste of the water that had been sitting in the hose in the sun is kind of what this started to taste like.  Unfortunately, it didn't get a whole lot better as the rubbery smell and taste started to taste a little burnt.  It really started to remind me of some really lousy Pinotage wines that I've had.  My sum-it-up line in my notes reads "this was nice for the first 10 minutes it was open...then it tasted like an old tire."  This is certainly not my new favorite wine, but as with so many others on this site, I'm not willing to write it off wholesale because of one bottle.  I'll give it another shot, but I'd pass on this particular bottling unless you're really into drinking what a car accident smells like.

Zweigelt - Austria

I can't prove this, but I would guess that wine drinkers (at least American ones) have a bias for grape names that sound like they originate from a Romance language. If you take a good look at the list of grapes that dominate the marketplace, nearly all of them have a French, Italian or Spanish name. Now, I'm not saying that it's purely a linguistic preference that has elevated Cabernet Sauvignon or Chardonnay to their esteemed positions. In fact, I think it's probably the opposite effect; since most of the big time wine grape names have a certain kind of sonic resemblance, then we are probably more likely to associate similar sounding words with quality wine than we are words that sound drastically different. Like Zweigelt, for instance.

In the pantheon of mellifluous grape names, Zweigelt sticks out a bit, but it could have been worse. It was created in 1922 by Fritz Zweigelt in Klosterneuberg, Austria, who originally named it Rotburger, which would be a very tough sell in the US. There is another red grape created in 1928 by crossing Trollinger (Schiava) and Riesling that goes by the name of Rotberger which is completely unrelated (interestingly, there is also Kerner, which is a white grape with the same parentage). My first thought was that perhaps Zweigelt came to be named after its creator in order to avoid confusion with the other grape, but it appears that Rotberger is hardly planted, and, in some places, the old Rotburger name is still used. My guess is that it was probably a marketing decision that somebody made to make the wine sound a little friendlier to non-German speaking consumers.

In any case, Zweigelt was created by crossing Blaufränkisch and St. Laurent. Austria, like its neighbor Germany, is predominantly a white wine producing nation and most of their focus is on Grüner Veltliner and Riesling (in fact, almost two-thirds of all wine production in Austria is white wine). Zweigelt is the most planted red grape in Austria, accounting for about 10% of the total vineyard area. It is not limited to a particular place, but seems to be grown all over Austria and even Canada is beginning to have some significant Zweigelt plantings. The grape has a late bud break, which allows it to tolerate colder climates a bit better since it can miss many of those early frosts that can decimate vineyards. It is also early ripening which further shortens the growing season, allowing the extremes at both ends of the growing season in many northern climates to be bypassed.


Zweigelt is relatively accessible in US markets. Many larger wine shops may have one or two different bottles kicking around in the German section. I was able to pick up a 2008 Gobelsburger Zweigelt for about $15. In the glass, the wine was a mulberry purple color with medium saturation. The nose had a little funky earth thing happening with raspberry and strawberry fruit and a wet leaf character. On the palate, the wine was medium bodied with fairly high acid and little tannins. There were racy tart cherry, tart plum, and wild strawberry flavors with a bit of clove and allspice hanging around. The funkiness in the nose doesn't really extend to the palate, which is a very good thing for me. Some people are very tolerant of or may even relish those funky, gamey notes in a wine but they are generally unwelcome for me. This wine is very similar to its parent Blaufränkisch and also shares some similarities with Pinot Noir as well. This is a very versatile food wine that could probably cover everything from salmon or tuna fish dishes up to roasted red meats. I would probably stop short of grilled meats with this wine and reach for something with a bit more stuffing to it.

UPDATE - 6/7/11

I've recently been able to try a very interesting sparkling Zweigelt from Ewald Gruber called "Punkt Genau," which means "on the dot."  This line and winery is perhaps best known for its production of sparkling Gruner Veltliner (which will be featured on this site soon).  These are non-vintage bottlings and this particular wine ran me about $15 from Bauer Wine & Spirits.  In the glass, the wine was a very pale pink color with frothy bubbles.  The nose on this was very fruity with nice strawberry and candied red raspberry notes.  On the palate, the wine was very fruit-forward with strawberry and raspberry fruit and nice acidity.  The bottle says this wine is dry, but it tastes a little sweet, either because of the strong fruitiness or because there may just be a touch of residual sugar here.  I'm not sure how this wine was fermented, but it was probably done in the Charmat method or it was laced with CO2.  The style here is definitely more frizzante than fully sparkling and there's virtually no chance this is traditional method as it just doesn't have the yeasty, toasty secondary  fermentation aromas or flavors that you get in a traditional method sparkler.  The wine is actually under screwcap, which is a new one to me in a fizzy wine. It's a very clean, refreshing, friendly wine that would be great with brunch or just to unwind on a hot day.