Schlossed On Alpine Dew - The Wines of Weingut Unterortl
The precariously balanced vineyard of Unterortl
Although I enjoy wine at home (just as bears wear funny shaped hats) I admit that I don’t really taste it. A shocking confession; surely in my “neck of work” my palate should be on the eternal qui-vive, poised and exquisitely critical. Well, sod that for a game of spillikins because when I relax gravity and levity propel the liquid down the gullet barely washing the sides of the throat and the brain is virtually always terminally disengaged.
Then again there are those sneaky private wine epiphanies, delicious moments when your nostrils twitch and arch and your senses tingle with anticipation. Though I may appear to deprecate enthusiastic responses, I secretly want to love the wine and shower gorblimeys on it. Tonight two wines from Weingut Unterortl sent me delving into my lexicon of soft coos and knowing winks. They hail from the Dolomitic fastness of Castel Juval, a chunk of Alpine supersculpture owned by Reinhold Messner, the mountaineer’s mountaineer, and his partners-in-wine Gisela and Martin Aurich. The vineyards are stunningly located about 800m above the valley on appropriately steep gneiss-rich slopes (you can imagine the pickers abseiling crazily down the hill). In this perfect environment as near as dammit perfect wine can be made; each grape surely carries its own reinheitsverein.
Back down in planet kitchen I tried a white called Juval Glimmer and verily it did glimmer and glint with diamond-sharp acidity. Language is wholly inadequate to describe this conjunction of purity and minerality; this is freshness exemplified, the electric freshness of citrus fruits zested over mountain stones, and, doubtless, a further seam of glacial-related metaphors to be liberally mined. Some wines are so pared down and linear, and possess such firm integrity, that the circumlocutions of description, even a terse tasting note, will fall short of honouring the nature of the wine – which is to say, the wine is.
And what is it? Try Fraueler and Blatterle mixed with Riesling. It’s shy at first, more stone than fruit, then reveals apple and even pineapple checked by lemony acidity. There’s a touch of smokiness, but not pronounced. A little pippin.
And do the reds measure up? Think Blauburg-yumder. A flugelhorn of Tirolean finesse. Limpid mountain Pinot, the essence of kirsch, bramble-jelly and woodland fruit and a natural sheen of vanillin that melts into the wine. It’s as fresh and elegant as you hope for without being unduly structured or striving for complexity.
Posted by Doug on 15-Aug-2008. Permalink
Click here to go back to the list of articles