When Italy’s Collio DOC voted in December 2024 to include orange wines in their disciplinare, the news barely caused a ripple in the grand lake that is global wine. Meanwhile, I was in a state of mild shock. One of Italy’s most conservative appellations had just voted to allow orange wines to bear its hallowed classification.
The decision clearly made sense: Collio is ground zero when it comes to orange wine. It was here, after all, that seminal growers like Gravner and Radikon redefined skin-fermented white wines in the late 1990s. Once considered heretics, their approach is now established worldwide. If Italy’s wine bureaucracy could embrace this change, why not Austria too? I was reminded of a question Michael Moosbrugger, director of Schloss Gobelsburg in Kamptal, once asked me: could I imagine an Austrian appellation for natural wines? It felt rhetorical at the time, but now his words felt more than prescient.
Simon J. Woolf has been writing about wine since 2011 in magazines, books, on and offline. He writes about what he personally likes to drink, and the overarching themes he covers - organic and biodynamic farming, sustainability, low intervention, natural and orange wine - all represent his own deeply held beliefs and passions. His first book "Amber Revolution - How the World Learned to Love Orange Wine" has become the go-to guide to this wine category. "Foot Trodden - Portugal and the Wines that Time Forgot" was published in 2021, and co-written with Ryan Opaz. Both books were New York Times wine books of the year, and "Foot Trodden" was shortlisted for a James Beard award.
These days, when I discover a new wine producer, it usually happens at a restaurant. I turn the bottle around, read the information on the label, and later, research the wine on the Internet, looking for a blog post or something reliable on Instagram. Maybe I’ll find a few photos, or a social media post from someone I trust who has actually met the winemaker. Someone lucky enough to be living in Europe, who is able to do what I once did on a regular basis: hop on a train, rent a car, find the vineyard — or, meet the…...
The scent of pine trees is a time machine, a brusque mix of barbed, balsamic beauty. I have a million pine memories. One good whiff and I’m transported home, sap streaking the inside of my scraped arms as I scale the tall white pine in our neighbor’s backyard, lunchbox dangling from the rear belt loop of my short pants. Lost in a cross-hatching of aromatic needles. I’m in the warming house of the town rink, my toes aching with cold. Silhouetted skaters float and spin on the bumpy ice outside. A pine fire acrid with resin heaves black smoke up…...
For most wine drinkers, Riesling and Grüner Veltliner are gateways to Austrian wine. But with Austria’s wide range of climates and geography, this tiny country offers surprising varietal diversity. Forty-two different wine grapes are native or traditional, with expressions ranging from light and vibrant to rich and baroque. Topping the list are varieties with long histories in Austria: the red grapes Blaufränkisch and Zweigelt, the whites Chardonnay (known in Austria as Morillon) and Sauvignon Blanc. Then there are the 22 grapes on the back half of the list, each accounting for less than 1% of total plantings. All these varieties…...
Trink Magazine | Austria's winegrowing region of Carnuntum has seemingly been there from the beginning with an identity forever in flux. Paula Redes Sidore explores how growers are redefining what regionality means, together.
12/17/2021 Wines with a View at Winkler-Hermaden By Jill Barth The story of Weingut Winkler-Hermaden and its home in a striking 11th-century castle starts with a “small, tough” woman. That woman, Magdalene Helene, was current proprietor Georg Winkler-Hermaden’s grandmother. When he found her diary, which she kept from her arrival at the Schloss Kapfenstein in 1916 through WWII, he “began to read and couldn’t stop until the book was finished.” In 1916, Magdalene Helene came to the castle as a young woman to work as a maid. Just two years later, her employer died and bequeathed the Schloss and…...
Is there a way to understand a vineyard? Wines from certain sites evoke the urge to uncover more about the place and the reason the wines taste the way they do. These are wines that, whatever the vintage or producer, manage to stay true to some sensory basics. Riesling might be the medium, but the message is origin. Geography and geology are where the notion of terroir begins. To understand a vineyard is to listen to what place tells us through location, aspect, and soil. Zöbinger Heiligenstein in Kamptal, Austria has plenty to say. The brave little vineyard: Heiligenstein’s storied…...
