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.