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.

Irsai Olivér - Buda, Hungary

In the first two months that this blog existed, I wrote about two different wines from Hungary: Bull's Blood, which was actually my second post ever (so be kind if you read it) and a dry white wine made from Furmint grapes.  Since October of last year, though, I hadn't been able to find any new or interesting wines from Hungary.  Sure, there are plenty of Tokaji wines out there and most of them are out of this world, but Tokaji isn't really unusual enough for me to write about here.  I remembered that I had picked up a wine several years back made from the Irsai Olivér grape in Hungary, but the place I bought the wine from went out of business a few years back (it was the Best Cellars that used to be in Coolidge Corner in Brookline).  I wasn't sure if I'd ever get another crack at the grape, but I got lucky and caught Bin Ends when they happened to have a few bottles in stock and I'm glad I got to give the grape a second chance.  My first experience with it was very underwhelming, but this time around, I found the grape much more interesting.

But before we get to that, it's time to talk a bit about the grape itself.  It was created in 1930 in Hungary from crossing two other obscure grapes, Pozsonyi and Pearl of Csaba.  There is very little information available about the Pozsonyi grape, but there is a little information about Pearl of Csaba.  Pearl of Csaba was created in 1904 in Hungary and, most importantly, one of its parents was a member of the Muscat family of grapes, Muscat Courtillier (also known as Muscat Précoce de Saumur).  This particular Muscat variety is often used in crossing experiments because it ripens very early (hence the "Précoce" in the name which means "early" in French) which is a trait that many people want to propagate.  Irsai Olivér inherited this trait from its grandparent and also picked up quite a bit of the Muscat character as well.

I'm not sure about Pozsonyi, but Pearl of Csaba was originally bred to be a table grape in Hungary and Irsai Olivier was intended to follow in its footsteps.  It is still cultivated as a table grape in many places, but it is also finding some popularity as a wine grape as its only viticultural weakness is a particular susceptibility to powdery mildew.  It is fairly popular in Slovakia and the Czech Republic where it is known as Irsay Oliver.  Most resources indicate that the proper Hungarian spelling of the grape's name is Irsai Olivér, but the bottle that I had definitely spelled it Olivier.  I'll confess that I don't understand the diacritical marks in the Hungarian language, so I don't know if the "ie" spelling is equivalent to the "é" or not.  I cannot find any information on the historical basis of the name Irsai Olivér.  The breeder's name was Pál Kocsis and when I enter the name of the grape into a Hungarian translator, the same two words pop back out the other side.

Whatever the source of the grape's name, I was able to pick up a bottle of the 2008 Nyakas Cellars Irsai Olivier from my friends at Bin Ends for about $10.  In the glass, the wine had a silvery lemon color.  It was explosively aromatic with aromas of lychee, flowers (possibly orange blossom?), and ripe peaches.  The wine was medium bodied with acidity on the higher side of medium.  There were flavors of lychee fruit, mandarin oranges, orange peel, ripe pear with just a touch of lemony citrus.  The palate was more restrained than the nose, but it was still nicely flavorful.  When I had this same wine a few years back, I remember being bowled over by the aroma, but finding that the palate was so restrained that it ended up being a disappointment.  This bottle definitely followed through more on the palate without it being overwhelming.  Gewurztraminer and Muscat are the two obvious comparison points here, but this reminds me much more of Torrontés.  It's refreshing, a pleasure to sniff and has a kind of restrained dignity on the palate that doesn't overwhelm you, but doesn't leave you unsatisfied either.  For fans of aromatic white wines, this is a must-try.

Dry Furmint

Furmint is one of those grapes that is typically hidden behind a geographical name. Its best known incarnation is in the sweet, botrytized wines of Tokaji, Hungary, where it is blended with a few other native grapes and known as Tokaji Aszú. This sweet wine has been known and widely consumed for several centuries, as there are references to Aszú wines as far back as 1576. It was frequently served at royal tables throughout Europe and the list of notable people who have written about Aszú wines reads like a who's who of world culture. The region where Aszú is made was the site of the first appellation control in the history of wine, predating the Port system by several decades. Aszú is so important, it is even mentioned in the Hungarian national anthem!

Tokaji Aszú isn't particularly easy to find in the United States, but it's not terribly difficult either. Most wine stores with a fairly large inventory generally will stock at least one sweet Tokaji wine. The dry version, however, is a different story. Very little of it is exported to the US and the only place I've been able to find any is an Eastern European specialty store in Brookline, MA. The bottle I picked up was from the Royal Tokaji company, a top-flight producer of Aszú wines best known to me because of British wine writer Hugh Johnson's part ownership of the company. The vintage was 2007 and the price tag was a hefty $25.

In the glass, the wine had a straw color tending to yellow gold. The color was darker than I expected in a wine this young, and I soon found out why. Strong vanilla in the nose makes me think this wine saw a lot of new oak. It reminded me very strongly of California Chardonnay, which is either very nice or very unwelcome, depending on your tolerance for that winemaking style. In this case, I really wanted to get a sense of the varietal itself, and it felt like the grape was hiding behind a massive wall of oak. Furmint is apparently not particularly aromatic, much like Chardonnay, so I may not be missing much, but it was still a bit of a disappointment. I was looking for something new and interesting and instead found something that I can buy pretty much anywhere in the US, though it was much cheaper than many high-end Chardonnay bottlings.

Anyhow, the wine itself was full-bodied, rich and creamy in the mouth. There was a lot of ripe apple and pear flavors along with the creamy vanilla. I picked up a little bit of light citrus flavors reminiscent of lemon peel, but not a lot. Considering the fact that Furmint is traditionally known for it's high acidity, this wine was surprisingly flat. It is generally that strong acidic core that allows Aszú wines to age for so long, and it just wasn't really in this wine. Don't get me wrong, the wine wasn't flabby; there was just enough acidity there to keep the body of the wine from going totally over the top, but it wasn't as pronounced as I had expected. Overall, the wine was fairly balanced and tasted pretty good, but there wasn't anything new or exciting about it. You can get something that tastes almost exactly like this from practically every winery in California who is producing a Chardonnay.

Bull's Blood - Egri Bikaver, Hungary

If you spend enough time exploring some of the more neglected corners of your local wine shop, you may run across this colorfully named wine from Hungary. Egri Bikaver, which translates as "bull's blood from Eger" (Eger is the region in Hungary where this wine originates), is a blend of several different grapes. As far as I can tell, the blending is not standardized, so this wine can potentially have a wide range of different styles and tastes. The grapes that are supposed to comprise the blend are Kadarka, Kekfrankos (known as Blaufrankish in Austria or Lemberger in Germany), Kekoporto (Portugieser in Austria and Germany), Cab Sauv., Cab Franc, Merlot, Kekmedoc (also known as Menoire), Pinot Noir, Blauberger and Zweigelt. Yikes!

From what I can gather, historically Kadarka was the primary grape used for this blend, but it is a finicky grower and many producers have reduced its role while promoting Kekfrankos to the forefront. Oz Clarke and Hugh Johnson seem to think that this is a turn away from quality, but since I've never tasted "classic" Egri Bikaver, it's hard for me to say.

So what about that name? Legendary accounts have it that during a Turkish invasion, a group of soldiers in Eger were under siege in the Castle of Eger. To give them strength to repel the invasion (and, apparently, some liquid courage), they were given a banquet with a great deal of food and a whole lot of wine. They must have really tied it on during the feast, because when they showed up on the battlefield, their shirts were covered in the dark red wine. The Turks believed that the Hungarian defenders had been drinking bull's blood to give them strength in battle, and so they gave up.

So what does it taste like? I bought a bottle of Egervin's 2007 Bull's Blood for a whopping $7.99 to find out.

In the glass, it was a dark magenta color that was pretty solid out to the rim. It turned a little ruby at the edges. It wasn't as saturated as you might think something called Bull's Blood might be. It looked like a young, pretty well-extracted California Pinot Noir in the glass.

The nose was very juicy with a lot of red berry smells. Raspberry and light cherries were the predominant flavors. It wasn't a spectacular nose, but for $8, things were starting to look a little promising.

The wine was light to medium bodied, which was a big surprise. I've seen these bottles before and just assumed that there was a big tannic monster lurking in there. Not so, apparently. There were virtually no tannins in the wine at all and the fruit flavors were light cherry and some raspberry as well. The wine has a sky-high acidity and the finish turns a little musty and sour. This is certainly not a wine for contemplation or in-depth analysis; rather, it is a very food-friendly wine which would pair nicely with tomato based dishes or moderately heavy chicken and pork dishes. I'd probably stay away from steaks or roasts as it just doesn't have the tannin or heft to stand up to that kind of treatment.

It definitely reminded me of the few Lemberger's that I've had, in that it also reminded me somewhat of a pinot noir. It has the same kinds of ripe, light red berry fruits and low tannin that I associate with lower-tier California Pinot Noir. My guess would be that this is one of the Egri's that lean heavily on the Kekfrankos grape as opposed to the denser Kadarka. I will definitely keep my eyes open and try different brands if I see them around and will post updates below.