The new 2020 vintage!

New challenges for the South Tyrolean wine industry.

March 2021

Othmar Doná is convinced that wine trends come and go, but the best wines remain. This experienced cellar master from the Kurtatsch Winery rhapsodises about his "grand cru" premium wines even in difficult sales years: "Brenntal, one of the warmest South Tyrolean locations, is probably one of the best Merlot terroirs outside of France!

A fine mesh of water veins, emanating from three directions, guides mineral salts from the mountains under the earth ". These salts, which the water carries from high altitudes into the hot valley, determine the Alpine profile of "Brenntal" Merlot.

Even the "Brenntal Merlot" magnum from a wet 2020 vintage, equally difficult as the 2014 vintage, was outstandingly elegant in comparison to fellow varietals, finely fruity with spicy tones of cedar & eucalyptus and with a long, sweet-fruity finish.

It therefore looks like quite a good vintage and that one could have what it takes to produce promising red and white wines.

Due to the crisis caused by the Coronavirus, EU winegrowers and wineries will receive additional aid from the EU and subsidies are to be increased - good news for South Tyrolean winegrowers too, who struggled with sales in 2020 due to the closure of restaurants and hotels for weeks on end, as well as the implication of travel restrictions.

Stephan Filippi has been cellar master at the Bolzano Winery since 1988, making him one of the longest-serving, most tenured cellar masters in South Tyrol. A shrewd cellar veteran like Filippi has often demonstrated that a period of economic crisis on the wine market can bring with it opportunities for new approaches. Over decades, the Bolzano wine cellar cooperatives have built up a solid economic foothold with unrivalled, premium wines across the classic range. Devilishly drinkable, the Bolzano red, the St. Magdalener "classic", vulgo: the basic St. Magdalener from the Bolzano wine cellar cooperatives. Often, very often, this wine pertains (as the true underdog or outsider at the Vernatsch Cup) to the category winners! & in the blind tastings prevails over its far more expensive colleagues of which only a few thousand bottles are bottled in comparison to its up to 6-7 hundred thousand bottles! Kudos, compliments to cellar master Stephan Filippi, has a fantastic knack for creating quaffable wines and not only with Lagrein.

Rudi Kofler, the cellar master at Terlan Winery, views the wine year quite favourably: "From a meteorological point of view, the wine year was rather calm so the vines were not subjected to any moments of stress and followed their natural cycle undisturbed" - he foresees good prospects for Pinot Blanc with its interesting spiciness. “It therefore looks like quite a good vintage and that one could have what it takes to produce promising red and white wines."

A fellow winemaker Andrea Moser from the Kaltern Winery agrees - Moser also sees 2020 as an outstanding year for Pinot Blanc: "... especially the sites where we waited with the harvest, these have given us grapes with an ideal degree of ripeness, which - I am sure - will produce great Pinot Blanc wines with long storability".

We are in store for a surprise! Santé! To your health! Cheers!

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January 2021 – Long-lasting South Tyrolean reds from the best locations.

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Hotel Weingut Stroblhof at Appiano sulla Strada del Vino

  • Tour of vineyard & cellars with winegrower Andreas Nicolussi-Leck
  • Aperitif with homemade white wines
  • Living on a sixteenth-century wine estate
  • Spa treatments with beneficial products made from grapevines

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