...and now a word from the man behind the Moric: Wine and Culture

 —friend and colleague Roland Velich sent me this piece he'd written for Cultivino in Switzerland couple of weeks ago, about some of the Factors Underlying.
I got to liking it; have been always disposed to take a look at the cultural elements that frequently lurk behind the bottle—and before too long had cobbled together an English version...
There can be no doubt at this juncture that the world has another great red wine grape-variety, finding its way into the bottle.

  

Wine and Culture

the history of a borderland as seen through a glass of Blaufränkisch

by Roland Velich

It has been said that wine is one of the oldest elements of human culture. And so we ask ourselves how, then, did wine evolve into a cultural asset? The initial glance would suggest perhaps the fact that human intervention sought to achieve regular harvests out of a plant growing wild, in that the wild plant was cultivated and domesticated. People became settled and less nomadic, and thanks to an expanded dietary basis could spend the winter in secure quarters, where they were able to thrive and multiply—a well known and time-honoured story. And along with this, wine became a spiritual companion to the most widely different and various cultures.

The Foundation—

Ödenburg, known today as Sopron, was famous for its wine, the Ödenburger Blaufränkisch, which grew on the hillsides along Lake Neusiedl on the eastern outskirts of the city, as well as on the northern and southern foothills of the Ödenburg Mountains. A wine that had achieved great popularity, and as far as we know was successfully exported all over the world. Founder and sustainer, financier and daily bread for generations in Ödenburg and environs. Many aspects of the wealth and beauty of this city and neighbouring localities can still be seen today. Our wine is now grown on these last hillsides of the eastern Alps—geologically speaking, foothills of the Alps, covered with sediments left long ago by the Pannonian Sea. The climate here is continental, influenced by the Pannonian Plain. Our wine is grown at the intersection of the two great and dominant formations of the middle-European landscape, the Alps and the Pannonian Plain.

Conclusio I:

Bacchus amat colles. And it is not only Bacchus who loves the hillsides—Blaufränkisch loves them as well, along with other particular geologic, climatic and social circumstances conducive to achieving extraordinary quality.

The Undergrowth—

Blaufränkisch, a wine that achieved its first flight of fame at the time of the Napoleonic wars, and according to legend, was praised by the First Consul himself as one of the best red wines in all of Europe. The fine red wine was considered a valuable payment and exchange medium, equivalent to the hardest Napoleonic French currency, the franc—also a blue note. Is this where the name originated? Or is that just another good story? Others say that Charlemagne—personally, even—introduced the Blaufränkisch to the country. And of course, Empress Sissi of Austria, Franz Liszt, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the Iron Chancellor Bismarck—and so forth and so on—were allegedly great fans of the Blaufränkisch. Many stories, great names from the cultural world, but very little hard fact. Told in order to provide the wine with a cultural context and to solidify its value? More likely to make the good stuff taste even better to potential customers—shall we say, as an early PR gimmick...

Conclusio II:

Marketing, a technique long present in our culture, which doesn't really help us much in our presentation and findings. We've got to find things out ourselves.

Interruption—

Burgenland, a narrow stretch of land to the south of Vienna, bordered on the north by Slovakia, in the south by Slovenia, and at its longest border to the east by Hungary. Once known as German West Hungary within the Austro-Hungarian Empire, as an integrated constituent part of the Kingdom of Hungary—and this Hungary once one of the worlds greatest wine-producers. In 1921 Burgenland became part of Austria, seen as a source of supply for the city of Vienna. But the dictates of the victors in the First World War made a point of leaving all the cities of the former Deutsch Westungarn behind in Hungary: Steinamanger, Pressburg (now Bratislava in Slovakia) and Guens, as well as Ödenburg, the naturally-evolved centre-point of the region. Central point as well of a prospering wine-culture, with Blaufränkisch and Furmint as its most important grape varieties. Burgenland remained, but as a land without cities, and worst of all as a land without a capital to hold it together, bereft of its centuries-old historical context. The land of the Ödenburger Blaufränkisch was cut to pieces, and with this the history of the grape variety became lost in the dark labyrinth of Hungary's political confusions.

Conclusio III:

Politics as a great destroyer of cultural assets and traditional values.

Warmth—

Two wars and the barbed-wire they left behind in their wake, running across a once-unified region, the breaking-off of essential rural territory on the one side and the centre-point on the other, meant a great loss for all concerned. Loss of establishment, loss of identity, loss of self-confidence as well as confidence in the splendid circumstances the region had previously enjoyed. The result often expressed itself in terms of indifferent wines designed according to belief in the quality of other styles and belief in the omnipotence of homogenised taste— industrialised wines bereft of any soul, arisen out of the merciless categorical imperative of a Five Year Plan. The consciousness of a common history concerning a product that we share, a product rooted in its own strength and peerless character, as well as the sense of security that comes from being rooted in a common cultural identity, will demonstrate to us that it's not always the shirt that's closer to us than the jacket. On the contrary, 'tis the jacket keeps us warm in stormy weather. A grape variety like the Blaufränkisch would certainly have the ability to spread wonderful warmth out over the borders.

Conclusio IV:

Self-reflection as a spur to cultural development.

Culture—

Cultural achievement consists of the collection, amplification and implementation of techniques whereby with the passage of time a crude block is fashioned into an artistically expressive object capable of arousing emotions:

Natural circumstances of climate and soil, the directional orientation and incline-factor of hillsides; trial & error and the lessons learned. Recognising mistakes in previous interpretations of empirical data and correcting them, the choice of rootstock, the grape variety and which clone—the selection of seedlings and the research concerning where they might be planted to obtain the best result—vine-training techniques, plantation density, cultivation of the soil according to conditions, knowledge about the physiology of the vine and applying this to their cultivation—optimisation of harvest time according to style, and above all the most effective interpretation of the grape and its location... Picking (Lesen—the German verb means to read as well as to pick grapes) the individual vintages and accepting the characteristics and peculiarities that render each unique. Triage during harvest, instinct, influence of the soil upon flavour, destemming, maceration, active intervention or simple TLC (?), patience, risk, willingness, sleeplessness, maturing, casks, tasting, despair, enthusiasm, bottling-appointments, bottling. And all this every year all over again, each facet a new experience every time, which can exert its influence on the subsequent vintage. And finally we paste our label on the bottle!

Conclusio V:

The span of time from when first the semi-nomadic horseman discovered a flavourful berry in the forest—with which he filled his saddlebags and then after a week's journey home found something in the saddlebags that perhaps didn't taste as good, but had something inspiring about it—until today. Wine as a secularised object of desire and big business—but still great fascination as well—has developed its cultural history into a double helix with the deeply interwoven strands Humanity and Wine.

Roland Velich, born in  1963, comes from Apetlon on Lake Neusiedl in Burgenland. Together with his younger brother Heinz he led the family estate Weingut Velich to the top rank of Austrian viticulture, creating among others the white cult-wine Tiglat. In 2001, Velich embarked upon his visionary Blaufränkisch project MORIC, where he interpreted (within the context of Burgenland) a previously unknown, delicate and subtle style of wine made from old-vines parcels. Roland is one of the few individuals most keenly responsible for today's worldwide success and recognition of Burgenländer Blaufränkisch.

 

the voice of Riesling, now mature...

foto: Dorli Muhr

so tonight is Parsifal at the Met—this last work by that old bastard Wagner is somehow less problematic on stage than the majority of his oeuvre… perhaps because it lacks the bloated and hysterical poetry of the Ring, and makes no significant pretense at drama, invoking rather the ritually devotional, filling it out with the various stuffs of legendry stitched reasonably well together. The first several minutes of instrumental music—I have heard a lot, but can think of nothing more sublime that’s ever reached my ears.

My first time was late July 1976, in Wagner’s own hillside temple in Bayreuth. And I had the excellent fortune of arriving in Germany for the first time as the brilliant 1975 vintage was hitting the café tables… And since then have been a devoted partisan of German Riesling, even while I do acknowledge that the boys in Austria and Alsace—and even Down Under in Oz—also make respectable examples.

...so last Easter I was in Vienna, and had the good fortune to experience my second straight Easter Sunday performance of Parsifal in the Staatsoper. I preferred Waltraud Meier from the year before as Kundry, but Kwangchul Youn was spectacular as Gurnemanz, and Wolfgang Bankl—a fine actor, btw—was quite well-staged as a porno-film director in the role of the self-emasculated sorcerer Klingsor.

and afterward? Well, it was 11PM on Easter Sunday in Vienna—not the liveliest of European capitals—where does one go for a late snack? Answer was, the bistro at Palais Coburg—and there we found a bite to eat, along with a bottle of 1975 Rauenthaler Baiken Spätlese from Schloß Eltz. I did raise an eyebrow when the sommelier first decanted the 37-year-old Riesling and then brought out red Burgundy glasses for it—but he seemed to have done this before, so I didn’t bleat.

and what a treat! The wine could not have been in better shape from this vintage that sometimes gets short shrift in between the monsters from 1976 and the grand & eloquent 71ers...  Not only is Baiken among the more photogenic of the Rheingau vineyards, but it also has the reputation of bringing forth rather long-lived wines. The name comes from the word Biegen, which refers to the way that the vineyard arches its back as it flows over the hillside. There’s not much in the way of limestone here, but rather decomposed slate, mica schist and quarzite, blown over with loess.

and the venerable Spätlese, from this legendary but vanished estate—from what had been a difficult period for the storied Rheingau? Bottle in perfect shape. Dark gold in the glass, not nearly gotten to amber, and the secondaries were in full flower, not yet arrived at the forest-floor that someday would come out in the aromatix—and easy on the petrol... the wine possessed a vibrant acidity still; these ’75ers remain lively, and this one played on the palate with a nice breath of passion fruit and a hint of apple—which had certainly been more prominent in its youth—with lovely mineral highlights on the way down. Not so much residual sugar perceptible in the wine... and the background dishes—nothing fancy—served to bring accentuate its texture. A memorable experience.

~ good beginns on the Hungarian side of the fence

—to be sure, something rather promising this way comes...

thanks to my developing relationship with Viennese PR firm Wine&Partners, I recently received the assignment to translate a press-kit into English on behalf of an Austrian entrepreneur, who has in the last dozen years planned and planted some 5 hectares of vineyard on the Hungarian side of the Eisenberg—all with Blaufränkisch; or more properly in the local lingo, Kékfrankos.

Rainer Garger is the man behind the project, with his Hungarian cousin Imre Garger managing the vineyards and Reinhold Krutzler—who needs little introduction—as cellarmaster.

and Herr Garger very kindly sent me a sample bottle of his first release, the 2009 Nador Kékfrankos Reserve, which I lost little time in first carefully examining, then quite happily drinking.

we bear here in mind that all of Burgenland was until shortly after World War I known as Deutsch-Westungarn (Germanophone West Hungary, to put it delicately), and when Burgenland left Hungary and joined Austria, Ödenburg a.k.a Sopron decided to stay, along with Wieselburg (Moson) and Eisenburg (Vas), while Pressburg became Bratislava. So though the name remains, Burgenland lost all four burgs in its birth-pangs...

and there is much about Burgenland that has still little in common with more familiar Austrian neighbourhoods like the Kremstal and Wachau. It's a different culinary culture to be sure, and while there is more Grüner Veltliner planted in Burgenland than anything else, this region that had made its reputation on very fine nobly sweet wines has in the last half-dozen years come up with reds from their three native vines that stand a satisfying comparison to many better bottlings of Burgundy and Piedmont. Reinhold Krutzler and Uwe Schiefer are just a couple growers who’ve been bottling excellent wines in Südburgenland for quite some time now; there had to be untapped potential on the other side of this border that wasn’t always there...

and the wine:

Nador 2009 Reserve started out with a wonderful aromaticity, a whiff of dark chocolate and a bit of anis on top of dried fruit, fried fruit, true-and-tried fruit, mostly of the Weichsel/Zwetschke persuasion—dark cherries and plums... The wood was held nicely in check by Mr Krutzler; it's so easy to overload young vines with it. On the palate the cherries check in once more, rich and deftly textured with much nice spice about it, offering an encouraging mineral touch in the finish. One can imagine the potential for additional depth that will be realised in further vintages when the vines get a little bit older...

a visit to the Karthäuserhof ~

so perhaps it is exactly because webloggery is so-o-o-o 2008 that I am going to revive this one, which I have sorely neglected for the past eighteen+ months—

also, the Schindlers have put me on a very long leash with the Winemonger Imports weblog—this has not gone unappreciated—and I have gotten a great deal of pleasure writing about the wines I sell on their behalf. So although I do enjoy communicating via FB & Tw...

let us therefore call it a Groundhog’s Day resolution—a favourite holiday of mine—when every year I ask myself if I’ve seen my Shadow: the answer, Dr Jung, always seems to be—yes, rather; on many occasions...

and so: a quick look at the bottle up in the corner. Known to all, the pride of the Ruwer, the longest name on the shortest label, Eitelsbacher Karthäuserhofberg. Was just reading the daily, and it seems that Mr Tyrell has sold the place—to a family member resident on this side of the Atlantic—although the long-time principal is not going anyplace any time soon.

I owe a great deal to Christoph Tyrell. And not just because of the wines I’ve always enjoyed, everything from bright and lively Kabinett to the dramatic Auslese trocken. I first met him one day on a solo visit to Germany in the early nineties. He was one of several German growers who, upon learning of my interest in their language—others include Wilhelm Haag and Rainer Lingenfelder—have barely spoken a word of English to me since, which in the early nineties was a sink-or-swim proposition... I remember his patient elucidation of the way their language generates new material, speaking about hailstone damage. ‘Hagelschade,’ he intoned. ‘Hagel, Schade—von dem Hagel kommt der Schade...’

but the best thing Tyrell did for me was to persuade me to reschedule all of my appointments I’d made for the next day, and drive down to Tübingen—a university town way to Hell and gone away from Eitelsbach, 25 miles down the far side of Stuttgart in Schwabenland—and he was very emphatic, in the sense of ‘Do not fail to do this!’ Christoph had just returned from an exhibition of paintings by Paul Cézanne in the Kunsthalle in Tübingen, the most comprehensive exhibit for decades, and made very clear that it had been a rare and extraordinarily rewarding experience. So I took his advice, got on the phone and begged the necessary pardons, and early next morning headed south down the A61.

I had known of Cézanne for years, seen many of the paintings, but I was totally unprepared for the effect that such a widely-ranging collection would have upon the way I looked at visual art—and I have always felt fortunate to have been born in my favourite period of Art History: the first time I walked into the Hirschhorn Museum at nineteen years of age and saw the violent canvases of Willem de Kooning, along with many equally distinctive by Motherwell and Rothko, I had felt right at home. So I had always, fortunately, seen things from a flexible perspective. Perspective: there’s the word, and Cézanne was the innovator.

and it took me a while, but what finally got me farther back than Matisse and Monet was the visit with Christoph Tyrell, and his gentle insistence that I take a day off from wine-tasting. My appreciation of all visual art has ever since been richly informed by a more thorough acquaintance with the works of Paul Cézanne.

here is Der Spiegel’s writeup of the exhibit at the Tübingen Kunsthalle in 1993:

http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-13679560.html

set down on the two'th of sept

Seven Hymns to a Real Gone Goddess:

            1. Holy Days Drawn from Darker Fountains

            2. Scarlet Sabbath Commentary

            3. An Anthem for Clowns

            4. A Moderate Alchemy of Desultory Purpose

            5. Through the Mouse-Hole into Heaven

            6. No Fooling

            7. The Winds at Dawn

that Pest most pestiferous and pestilent... ~

Phylloxera Vastatrix...

...it sounds like the stage name of a frowsy screen-starlet appearing in low-budget S&M movies. And oh, what we folks in the world of fine wine wouldn’t give if only that were the case, and this critter—also known as Daktulosphaira vitifoliae—were really a cinema-performer of indifferent talent. Phylloxera is a little beastie of the insect persuasion, a louse—and a lousy one at that. Phylloxera is in the most deadly enemy of the fine-wine grape-vine. In fact, the only food of this worldwide menace is the fine-wine grape-vine, vitis vinifera. This little pestiferous insect, greenish-yellow of hue and silent of cry, nourishes itself by sucking fluid out of the vine. And as it sucks, it injects the plant with its poisonous saliva, which results in formation of small galls on the leaves, along with nodules on the roots. The resultant swelling inhibits growth in the infested sections of rootlet, and the portion eventually dies. This, coupled with secondary damage from fungus and other insects, results in the eventual decay of the plant. The adults are quite tiny, about .04 inch long and half as wide, and thus very difficult to detect. Phylloxera has got a rather complex life-cycle: some lice feed on the roots of vines, while other lice munch in a most licentious fashion on the foliage, providing a one-two punch that is easily capable of putting fine wine production down and out.

They’re quite prolific: each female lays 400 eggs per sitting, often reproducing asexually when there’s no male available. The nymph spends the winter on the vine, awakening with warm weather and commencing to feed. They spread either by being blown around by the wind, or by crawling on their own in search of new fodder once an infested vine dies—on occasion the female lays eggs that produce offspring of both sexes, who do mate. It makes one wonder, if there is indeed anything Intelligent about the Design of things, why Nature would provide such a destructive pest with so many means of propagation and survival...

What can be done to combat the spread of phylloxera? Sandy and wet soils offer vitis vinifera a certain degree of protection from the pest, but humidity presents good grape growing with other challenges. One solution is found in the vine-nursery. Even though our American vines vitis riparia and vitis berlandiera do not produce distinguished or even satisfying wines, they possess a native resistance to the depredations of the plant louse. The trick was developed some hundred and few years ago of grafting buds from vitis vinifera vines onto rootstocks of these aforementioned hardy midwesterners.

And no matter what one’s opinion of the French as a nation might be, one surely knows that they’ve had their gallic pride sorely wounded twice in the twentieth century, when it required armed intervention on the part of the United States to save their butts from the Germans. But an even crueler joke on them guys over there is the fact that nearly all of their celebrated grape-vines in Bordeaux, Burgundy and Champagne are in fact grafted on to vine-roots whose roots (as it were) are in Ohio.

It has become by now a moot point whether the pre-phylloxera wines of Bordeaux (by which we mean those from the 1860s and earlier) were greater and more profound than those made afterward, but once upon a time there was lively debate about whether or not Bordeaux had ever entirely recovered its former glory.

In the 1860s the insect was indentified who had just begun laying waste to the vines of Bordeaux and the Rhône. It had arrived on vines brought from the eastern United States for experimental purposes. From there, it spread out indiscriminately over the European continent, munching on every vinifera rootstock it could grasp with its greedy little mandibles along the way. By the end of the nineteenth century, it had destroyed two out of every three vineyards in Europe. And for an encore, it marched westward across the Rocky Mountains, and devastated the nascent Californian viticulture in the 1880s.

Imagine the level of panic. Some positive developments resulted, like when Bordeaux’s wine-expertise moved south to Rioja in search of resistant vineyards and created a Spanish still-wine industry, the fruits of whose labor we this day savor... But the European wine industry took up until the nineteen-twenties to come close to catching up.

And more recently in the closing years of the 20th Century, the curse came home to roost once more, when it began tearing a new path through the vines of California. Rootstocks which were developed in the 1960s and 70s to combat other problems turned out to be less resistant to the bug, and have recently been replaced at colossal expense—another factor which has contributed to price increases for the fine wines of Napa and Sonoma.