Räuschling isn’t just wonderfully umlauted, it’s also one of the most exciting autochthonous white wine varieties in German-speaking Switzerland. This became clear to me on a March afternoon in 2015. I had accepted an invitation from Mémoire des Vins Suisses to come to Zürich and take part in a Räuschling vertical tasting — featuring vintages that stretched back to 1935 — at Weingut Schwarzenbach in Meilen on Lake Zürich. Since then, I taste every Räuschling I can get my hands on. The lively acidity, fine citrus aromatics, and aging potential of this rare variety fascinate me over and over. Native…
Daniela Dejnega studied landscape design and discovered her love of wine while writing her thesis on "Erosion prevention in viticulture." Afterwards, she trained at the Weinakademie in Rust, Austria. She now lives in Vienna where she works as an editor at a viticultural trade magazine, writes regularly for Austrian wine publications, and is a frequent judge and taster at wine competitions.
Banned and beloved, feared and revered, one would assume the birth story of absinthe to be as spirited as its character. Yet its quite conventional beginnings can be clearly traced back to the mild-mannered region of Val-de-Travers, Switzerland, below the limestone-cliffed Jura mountains, where a greenish-gray perennial that gave the herbal elixir its name thrives on the lush borders of the region’s forests and roadsides. And so it is that neither the what nor the where, but rather the who of absinthe’s beginnings that has been called into question, becoming only the first in a long twisted tale of controversy…...
In Vulkanland Steiermark — “volcanic Styria” — the name says it all. Some 1,500 hectares of vineyard are, for the most part, sited on the slopes of extinguished volcanic cones that rise from a gently hilly landscape. Here Pannonian warmth from the east meets the Illyric balminess of the Adriatic. Among the best-known growers in Vulkanland are Weingut Neumeister, Winkler-Hermaden, and Ploder-Rosenberg. As throughout Styria, white varieties are most strongly represented, with Welschriesling and Weißburgunder (aka Pinot Blanc) statistically far in the lead, followed by Sauvignon Blanc, Müller-Thurgau, and Chardonnay; Zweigelt yields respectable red wines here as well. Traminer from…...
The Wine Friend is a figure of great importance in the life of a wine drinker. They can take the form a kind benefactor, perhaps older, perhaps wiser, one whose personal cellar heaves with decades of collected knowledge and interest, and whose guileless goal is to share these experiences with others as a form of vinous karmic pleasure. I count myself as lucky to have a few such friends, which is how I found myself — on one of those chilly, foggy autumn San Francisco evenings — drinking a very smart coterie of wines among a small group of pals,…...
With its nearly ideal set of conditions — location, climate, indigenous varieties —Austria’s Thermenregion curiously remains an insider secret. In addition to a colorful mix of varieties common in Austria, this region just south of Vienna devotes 200 of its 2,200 hectares to the autochthonous grapes Rotgipfler and Zierfandler. They are the region’s great opportunity and are now back in growers’ sights, as illustrated by their well-deserved inclusion in the book 111 Weine aus Österreich, die man getrunken haben muss. Beyond this, some producers here are venturing into new areas, like pét-nat, while among red wines, Sankt Laurent and Pinot…...
Though its name suggests otherwise, Roter Veltliner isn’t a red wine grape at all. Yet at maturity the grapes do take on a scarlet hue. And this juxtaposition is precisely what captivated Austrian winemaker Toni Söllner: “Even as a child, I was fascinated by Roter Veltliner. The grapes were red, but the wine they made was colorless.” Söllner’s organic estate is in Wagram, Roter Veltliner’s home turf. He has restored 2.5 ha to the old autochthonous variety. Söllner is not alone in his engagement on behalf of the rarity, but rather is one of 10 Austrian organic growers who have…...
I’ve read about as widely on Swiss wines as an Anglophone can: the relevant chapters of Jason Wilson’s delicious Godforsaken Grapes. The late Sue Style’s charming, informative Landscape of Swiss Wine. Ellen Wallace’s colorful Vineglorious. Dennis Lapuyade’s expert blog ArtisanSwiss. Stephan Reinhardt’s candid, convincing coverage in the Wine Advocate. But it is Dr. José Vouillamoz’s Swiss Grapes: History and Origin that has done the most to help me wrap my head around the marvelously confounding world of Swiss wines. The English edition, published in 2019 (two years after the original French), is a startlingly accessible and appealingly personal exploration of the trove…...
