The sun blazes. The air shimmers. On the horizon four figures throw long shadows across the dry, crumbling ground. They are headed toward a city. Doors swing open. The four step from light into dark, their throats dusty and dry. Behind a deserted bar stands a man. He pushes four full glasses over to them. Out of the glasses sloshes a wine as red as the setting sun. If you aren’t thirsty by now, you should at least be hearing the melody of a harmonica. This is how the opening scene of a revival—the Rotling revival—could begin. The four men…
Kevin Puls works in advertising and PR. His passion for Austrian wine began nearly two decades ago and he's regularly tasted the vintages of the Alpenrepublik from the Wachau to Styria. His weakness for estates that work organically and for natural wines started with Gut Oggau's 2007 vintage. He's also a regular visitor to Franken. He blogs about food, wine, and the people who make them.
Djuce first entered my periphery late last year at the New York City iteration of Karakterre’s natural wine fair. Amid a cheerful invasion of producers from what has winningly been dubbed “the Austro-Hipsterian Empire,” I narrowed my focus to taste at some touchstones of Austrian natural wine — Judith Beck, Zillinger, Heinrich, Meinklang, Nittnaus, Weninger. Hurrying between offerings of electric-amped Grüner Veltliner and ethereal Blaufränkisch, I brushed by a small table stacked with slim, colorful cans and a paper sign that read “Djuce.” I paused just long enough to register an internal eye roll at what I assumed was the bro-culture spelling and reflexive ecoism of yet…...
“Dry” describes what wine drinkers overwhelmingly profess to desire. And “trocken” can only appear on labels of German Rieslings with less than 10 grams of residual sugar. If one desires sweetness, there is no lack: Most of today’s Kabinetts are higher in sugar than were Auslesen of the 1980s. (Granted, the grapes were probably also higher in must weight.) Aesthetically as well as commercially, success in the realm of legal dryness—Trockenheit—as well as that of pronounced sweetness, can scarcely be denied. German Riesling growers have long since succeeded in proving that they too can render world-class dry wine, while simultaneously…...
Words are like viruses. They appear in culture and may lie dormant then suddenly they are everywhere, swirling about, adapting to their hosts, mutating to survive. In the wine world, this process can happen fast. "Purity," it turns out, is anything but pure.
St. Lawrence, the man, was born in Valencia, Spain, sometime around 225 CE. He moved to Rome to work with Pope Sixtus II, became a deacon, and earned a reputation as a champion of the poor. On August 10, 258, Roman Emperor Valerian sentenced him to die by being lashed to a bed of hot coals. But so great was his devotion to god, the legend goes, that he resisted the flames, demanding that his tormentors flip him like a steak. A martyr was made. St. Laurent, the grape, is thought to have originated in what is now eastern Austria…...
