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.

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.