I remember my first time trying retsina decades ago when the wine's quality was iffy at best, and a bottle went for about $3. But, in spite of its rot-gut reputation, I found the signature forest-like scent intriguing and immediately fell for its piney taste. My friend Nicole, on the other hand, took her time warming up to the wine.

“My first experience with retsina was that it tasted like rubbing alcohol or perhaps lighter fluid,” she recalls. “But it became an acquired taste because it paired so well with Greek salads, piled high with feta cheese and stuffed grape leaves.”

Lovers and Haters

Retsina can be a divisive topic within the wine world as well. 

There are wine critics who don’t consider retsina to be a wine at all. Mark Squires, whose specialty is Greek wines, is one of them. He wishes the wine would be permanently dropped from the conversation. 

“Retsina is wine adulterated with an additive that invariably overwhelms everything else about it, from the grape type to the terroir,” he writes in Retsina: Can We Never Mention It Again? (Robert Parker Wine Review, 1/10/17). Squires says that retsina has harmed the reputation of Greek wine and that it is in Greece's best interest “never to mention retsina in the same sentence as the word ‘wine’ again.”

In the opposite camp is wine writer Eric Asimov who offers hope to retsina lovers like Nicole and me. In Great Retsina, an Oxymoron No More (The New York Times, 1/17/19), he acknowledges that, while inferior retsinas are not going away anytime soon, he believes that the category of wine is slowly undergoing a renaissance.  

“Nowadays,” says Asimov, “mass-market retsina, sold in clear 500-milliliter bottles with crown caps, is usually the cheapest wine available in Greece. Often, in cities like Athens, it is mixed with soft drinks and consumed (primarily to catch a buzz) by those on student budgets.”

The renaissance he is talking about has nothing to do with those bottles.

“A trickle of producers,” writes Asimov, “is demonstrating that if retsina is made thoughtfully and carefully, from grapes grown conscientiously, it can be a delicious wine that goes beautifully not only with a wide variety of Greek foods, but with many other assertive cuisines as well. The producers who have embraced retsina are not trying to transform it into a profound wine, a collectible or a bottle worth aging to show its complexities. Instead, they want to turn retsina into a cultural tradition of which modern Greeks can be proud.” 

Origins

Retsina's history can be traced back to ancient times, when wine was typically stored and transported in clay jugs called amphorae. In Greece, one of the world’s oldest winemaking civilizations, winemakers used thick resin from the abundantly-growing Aleppo pine trees to seal the amphorae and protect the wine from oxidation. Evidence of pine resin has been found in Greek wine vessels dating back to the 13th century B.C.

Over time, the country's wine drinkers acquired a taste for the distinctive flavor of pine in their wines, and even after wooden barrels became the world’s wine storage vessel of choice, resin continued to be included in Greek wine production.

By the 20th century, however, retsina began to lose its appeal to an increasingly sophisticated Greek population who had been introduced to fruity, non-resinated wines. Many ambitious Greek wine producers abandoned retsina to focus on more marketable, non-resinated wines, made from grapes like Assyrtiko and Xinomavro, which have become extremely successful in the export market. The wineries that continued to make retsina tended to be large, commercial businesses who were more interested in quantity over quality. 

Winemaker Dimitris Georgas, owner of Georgas Family, a small winery in Spata of Attica, says that beginning in the 1950s, despite its increasingly poor quality, retsina remained a popular and affordable bulk wine for the working class and it was served "straight from the taverna’s old barrels, filling the five gallon family glass bottles." He noted that as an everyday table wine, there were no quality indicators on the labels either.

Retsina’s Rebirth

In recent years, as Asimov noted, there has been a small group of quality-minded producers that have been championing this distinctly Greek wine. This new generation of innovative winemakers, like Georgas, are using top-notch viticultural and winemaking techniques and are slowly giving retsina a new life.

"The image of retsina today is completely different, because many Greek winemakers have realized that retsina’s quality upgrade is of a great importance for Greek wine," says Stelios Kechris of the award-winning Kechris winery. "Thus we have changed, to a large extent, the image of retsina in the eyes and mind of the contemporary consumer in Greece and internationally. It is now a wine that is perceived as a quality wine, which offers unique opportunities for wine experiences and discoveries."

I was curious to find out what sets these new-style retsinas apart from the mass-market ones. It turns out that the higher-end retsinas are made with carefully grown grapes, a very small amount of the finest resin, and with the use of modern winemaking techniques.

“It’s the grapes we are using,” says Yiannis Paraskevopoulos, founder of Gai'a, one of Greece’s top modern wineries. "We use Roditis grapes that come from vineyards at a high altitude, guaranteeing crispness and fruitiness. Our really nice grapes are turned into wine by state-of-the-art techniques of white winemaking.”

Other wineries prefer to use the Savatiano grape (photo). At Domaine Papagiannakos, located in the Attica region near Athens, the family has been making retsina for three generations from Savatiano, Greece’s most widely planted grape. Stefanos Georgas, export manager of the winery, says that Savatiano is indigenous to Greece and the original variety used in antiquity. Another major factor in the high-quality of Papagiannakos wines, he says, is that the grapes are sourced from older, 50 to 55 year-old vineyards.

Dimitris Georgas is also a fan of the Savatiano variety, despite its bad rap since the 1970s of making thin and flavorless wines. Georgas believes that the grape can provide excellent results when “raised properly.” At Georgas Family, the grapes are meticulously farmed using biodynamic methods, and the vinification is natural with spontaneous fermentation, no interventions and no added sulfites for most wines.

“Retsina is a unique appellation wine with geographical origin,” says Georgas, “and traditionally, the Savatiano grape variety has provided a full body and good balance which are key to supporting the strong pine resin scent. Savatiano is also a fast ripening wine variety, which promotes fresh and yearly retsina in good maturation.” 

Yet it's important to note that the law does not dictate which grapes can be used, and producers are free to experiment with other types. Kechris says that the varieties he uses in his family's retsinas are Roditis, Assyrtiko and, for the rosé, Xinomavro.

The Role of Pine Resin

The producers I spoke with agreed that, in addition to carefully vinified grapes, the amount and quality of pine resin plays an important role in how the wine turns out. At Kechris, they aim for a harmonious balance between the aromas from the grapes, the fermentation and the resin.

"The resin we use is collected exclusively from the pine species Pinus Halepensis (Aleppo pine)," explains Kechris. "Resin, as a natural product, has characteristics that depend on many factors ... and are the result of time and harvest method of the resin, in addition to the pine forest's orientation, altitude and proximity to the sea, and also each year’s climate."

Gai'a's Paraskevopoulos says that even though there isn’t an appellation system in place for the pine resin, he says that they “know by experience and tradition that the resin coming from specific forests outperforms others."

“We are using an excellent quality, fresh and non-oxidized pine resin from a very specific pine forest called Kouvaras,” he says. “We use just a fraction of the quantity of resin compared to mass market retsinas. At the end of the day, we are not trying to hide problems that lesser wines have by adding massive amounts of resin. We aim to produce a complex, refreshing white wine, with an herbal twist in it, allowing the fruit to also ‘have a word’ to say.” Paraskevopoulos stresses the importance of using fresh resin since “aged resin oxidizes and conveys to the wine unpleasant aromas, such as paint remover.”

Certain times of the year are better for harvesting the pine resin as well. 

“At Domaine Papagiannakos (in photo), we harvest the pine resin, Pinus Halopensis, from Kouvaras at a specific time in the month of June as it has the best quality at that time,” says Stefano Georgas. He says that the winery’s philosophy is to express the Savatiano variety with just a delicate touch of pine resin. 

Over at Georgas Family, the wines see limited resin contact as well. Dimitris Georgas says that for his wines, due to no interventions in the vinification, the pre-fermentation resin is perfectly incorporated into the robust Savatiano grape body. 

“The resin is pretty invisible to the mouth,” says Georgas. “Many winemakers are safely exporting retsina around the world and sommeliers are no longer afraid to offer retsina on their menus. Our retsina is very well respected among sommeliers who know how to pair it with certain dishes that result in a beautiful experience for the consumer.”

Food-Friendly Wines

More and more, both the local and export markets are welcoming these relatively mild-tasting retsinas. People who once scorned the wine are now trying this newer style and discovering how well they pair with food.

"Retsina is perfectly suited to the intense aromas of Greek cuisine with herbs and other seasonings and elements like vinegar and garlic," says Kechris. "The acidity of a good retsina cleanses the palate from the greasiness of fried foods, while its aromatic freshness balances the heavy flavor of the olive oil on which Greek cooking is based. The natural brininess of seafood and the saltiness of many preserved foods demand the cool crispness only a good retsina can provide." He recommends pairing the wines with Greek dishes such as small fried fish, grilled lamb chops with rosemary and moussaka with eggplant, but also with Mexican, Indian, Thai and other Asian cuisines.

Paraskevopoulos concurs, saying that there are many ways to enjoy a good, fresh, retsina, especially with recipes that are, as he says, “high-pitched,” and made with bold ingredients like onions, garlic, curry, and “other known wine-killers!"

“Retsina acts as a small herbal bomb,” he says, “refreshing your palate and renewing your experience with what you are eating. Retsina has the power to set an honest fight with those wine destroyers and get out of it victoriously, for the benefit of us all.” 

Night at the Taverna

Curious to test out some of these new style retsinas, I met Nicole for dinner at Snack Taverna, a superb, casual Greek restaurant in Manhattan's West Village. We tried several wines alongside delicious and fresh-flavored dishes, including an assortment of pungent Greek dips (tzatziki, hummus, taramasalata, and more), garlicky shrimp with barrel-aged feta, and tender braised lamb shank with cinnamon scented tomatoes, kalamata olives and graviera cheese.

One sip of the Gai'a Ritinitis Nobilis took me back in time and reminded me of why I love retsina. Of the wines we tasted, this one had the strongest notes of pine, but it wasn’t overpowering at all. Due to its balanced notes of fruit, pine and citrusy acidity, the wine went perfectly with the creamy, full-flavored Greek spreads. It's no wonder this wine is a permanent part of Snack Taverna's mostly-Greek wine menu.

The Papagiannakos Retsina, on the other hand, had the least prominent pine resin aromas and could've almost passed for a non-resinated wine if tasted blind. But it was delicious—refined and elegant—with nice acidity and notes of pear and lemon, and with just a mere hint of the piney taste on the mid-palate.

The Georgas Family Black Label, unfined, unfiltered and without added sulfites, was our favorite of the evening. It was the most complex—from its extended lees aging— and full of bright citrus and fruit notes, along with the perfect amount of pine resin flavor and a superb tannic structure. Upon opening, the slight effervescence refreshed our taste buds, while an ash-like, chalky finish gave it an extra bit of interest. Over the course of the meal, there were many exciting layers of flavors in the Georgas wine that developed and changed, much to our enjoyment. 

We also enjoyed the Georgas Family Traditional Retsina, made with a touch of sulfites at bottling. At first, its bitterness was a bit too prominent but, over time, it lessened and the fruit and pine flavors became more noticeable. The wine was particularly tasty when paired with food. 

Unfortunately, I didn’t receive a sample of Kechris’ top retsina wine, Tear of The Pine, in time for the dinner, but I remember tasting it a few years ago and loving its refined and delicate take on the retsina wines of yore.

These interesting wines, bound to tradition but not trapped in time, give proof that, when made with care, retsina is capable of reaching new heights. They are food-friendly wines that deserve to be celebrated and enjoyed at the table.

Elliott Eglash: What do you think makes your growing region special or distinctive? 

Florian Gojer: Alto Adige is a contrast-full wine region. While in warm valley locations strong red wines find excellent conditions, in cool mountain locations white wines grow which reflect the alpine freshness. If we look at our own wines, it is very similar: In Santa Maddalena, the warmest location of the country, fine St. Maddalena wines grow in steep hillside locations and in the Bolzano Valley locations the heat-loving and powerful Lagrein wines. On the other hand, our white wines Kerner, Sauvignon and Weissburgunder (Pinot Blanc), come from sites between 600 and 730 meters above sea level, where cool downdrafts from the mountain maintain the acidity and provide fresh aromas.

Tell me about the history of your estate, and how you came to be involved in it and in winemaking.

The Glögglhof is the name of the estate and farmhouse. Traditionally the farmhouses have names. 'Glöggl' means little bell, 'hof' stands for estate. The Glögglhof dates back to the 14^th century and wine has always been produced here from the associated vineyards. I’m now the fifth generation of the Gojer Family to produce wine. My grandfather sold the wine by the barrel. In 1970 my father Franz Gojer was a true pioneer in the St. Maddalena area, he was the first one to bottle the wines and in 1987 he was the first one to produce a Cru / single vineyard St. Maddalena wine, our St. Maddalena Classico Vigna Rondell.

Growing up in a family of winegrowers means to learn about it in a passive way as a child, just because it’s a daily topic and helping my dad with some vineyard or cellar work was very common. After the general agricultural high school, I studied winemaking in Germany and did an Internship in California at Au Bon Climat with Jim Clendenen. Since 2009 I've been responsible for the winemaking in our estate.

What varietals do you focus on and why?

Our most important variety is Schiava, followed by Lagrein, these are the two indiginous red grapes of the region. Schiava is the variety we appreciate most, it's our true identity as a wine region and for our estate. At the moment we produce four Schiava-based wines:

Schiava rosé, Schiava Alte Reben, St. Maddalena Classico and St. Maddalena Classico Vigna Rondell.

Schiava and St.Maddalena wines are so elegant, easy to pair with food, you can drink them all day long (in fact it would be the perfect Thanksgiving wine, with all that different types of food you have that day, it's just a perfect option). St. Maddalana is a restricted growing area on the south-facing slopes next to Bolzano, where Schiava does best. St. Maddalena wines are a traditional blend of minimum 85% Schiava and maximum 15% Lagrein. The hills of St. Maddalena were formed during the last ice age by the glaciers, which deposited their complex debris from various types of rock. The light and sandy soils are perfect for Schiava, because they drain the water very well and guarantee smaller grapes and berries and therefore, more complex and intense wines.

We also produce three different Lagrein wines: Lagrein Granat (basic Lagrein), Lagrein Riserva (from our best sites, 12 months barrel aged, eight months big oak, five months bottle) and PIPA (fortified dessert wine, produced like a vintage port wine).

When we bought the second estate in Karneid at approximately 600m of altitude, we had a look at the soil and exposure and thought about which wines would grow best in this location. We decided to plant Kerner on the northwest facing part and in the highest altitude vineyard, because it needs the coolest conditions. Sauvignon is planted on the south west facing part with more moraine soils on volcanic underground, where it does best and gets less green and more yellow fruit expression, which I like. 

Sauvignon Blanc is an exciting variety and with vines getting older, the wines show more minerality and depth with some smoky notes. So I started to work on a Riserva version, trying to push the vineyard character more and more and when I’m satisfied with the results, it will be bottled separately.

Weissburgunder grows on the west facing part and on more limestone influenced soil, that supports it’s finesse.

What is your winemaking philosophy? What are you trying to accomplish?

My goal is to produce elegant and at the same time complex wines, that reflect the soil as much as possible, as well as the differences of the vintages. We try to reach that through meticulous work in the vineyards, in my eyes that’s the most important part, of course followed by an attentive accompaniment to the wines in the cellar.

What have been some of your biggest challenges as a winemaker?

In 2010 we started to produce our first white wines, that has been a challenge for us, because we used to produce only red wines. But with the years and with experimenting a lot we improved and learned more about the vineyards. But with every vintage we always learn something new. Schiava does always challenge us: in the vineyards because of its thin skin—it`s very sensitive to both powdery and downy mildew—and in the cellar, Schiava tends to reduce a lot. But now we know how to handle this quite well.

What does the future look like for you and for the other winemakers of Alto Adige?

The future will bring us more challenges such as climate change, but we can react by planting at higher altitudes and probably by working with other varieties. What worries me more is the increase of extreme weather events (heavy storms, hail, draughts, heavy winds).

But I think that as a small, quality-driven region, we will always have a good chance on the wine market. With the ongoing crisis we understood that focusing on tourism only can be dangerous and that we have to diversify more. There will be a stronger shift towards organic/biodynamic in the future.

We see an increasing interest in Schiava wines, because of its light and unique character, which of course is a good evolution for our future. Our goal is to be present in more markets with our wines and at the same time to increase the number of direct sales to current clients, because they are very reliable, even in times of crisis. Soon, our new cellar and tasting room will be ready and this will fit well with the vacation apartments we rent.

Visit our beautiful region, explore the contrasts of our climate in the different growing areas, see the steepness of the vineyards and the differences of the soils, altitudes and exposures. Go for a hike in the beautiful Dolomites and enjoy great food with traditional Tyrolean dishes or meals that are strongly influenced by the Mediterranean kitchen. People, landscapes, tradition and of course the wines will make a memorable journey for you. Pass by at our estate for a delicious glass of St. Maddalena.

As Father’s Day approaches, we were looking for a quintessential story about a dad in the wine world. When we were starting out, there were, among others, Robert Mondavi, Louis Martini, August Sebastiani, Joe Heitz, and Ernest and Julio Gallo, men who made lasting contributions to Americans’ enjoyment of wine through their eponymous wineries. And they left offspring who carried on in the industry, some for many years in the businesses their dads founded, others longer with their own wine companies.

Then back in February, we were sent two extraordinary wines. When we researched them, we discovered a warm tale of fathers and sons that we didn’t know.

We had not heard of David Taub, who died in 2012 at 72 from kidney disease. He was a significant wine importer and distributor, credited with introducing Pinot Grigio to the U.S. That was in the late 1970s and the sales of that Pinot Grigio, made by Cavit in Trentino near the Italian Alps, contributed to Italy surpassing France as the number one source of imported wines in the U.S. in the 1980s, according to the New York Times obituary of him. The Pinot Grigio by Cavit, now a longtime partner of the Taub family’s Palm Bay International wine import company, is still the best-selling Pinot Grigio in America.

The Taubs’ story in wines and spirits so far spans four generations, giving flesh to an iteration of the wines’ name, infinite. Infiné also translates in English as “at last,” Marc told us, explaining that it took years to develop the stunning Pinot Grigio and the white blend that honor his father, who himself had worked for 36 years to bring the best expressions of a wide variety of grapes to the American table. Marc, 54, president and CEO of Palm Bay International and Taub Family Selections, and his son Jake, 24, key account specialist at the family’s wholesaler, Independence Wine & Spirits in New York and New Jersey, came up with the name Infiné while on vacation in Italy, one of David’s favorite places. “1939” refers to the year David was born.

“I lost my dad too early, at a fairly young age. He was a man of incredible energy and depth and compassion and passion all at the same time. And I miss him and I wanted to make sure that he got the recognition that he deserved for what he brought to the industry, particularly with Pinot Grigio. I wanted something that embodied some of the things that he loved,” said Marc.

David had worked alongside his father, Martin, who got into the spirits business in New Jersey the same week Prohibition ended. Soon after the end of World War II, which introduced American soldiers to wine overseas, Martin founded Premier Wine & Spirits, which sold mostly Gallo wines in New York. Father and son, that’s Martin and David, founded Palm Bay International in 1977 to import wines from Italy, especially Pinot Grigio. Soave was the white Italian wine Americans knew back then and David thought Pinot Grigio might outsell it so he convinced a large producer, Cavit, to let Palm Bay import it, and also to Americanize its name from what sounded like Ca-Veet to Cavit.

Television personality Dick Cavett was hired for the marketing campaign. “Insist on the ‘Definitive’ Pinot Grigio. Ask for Cavit, as in…Cavett,” read a full-page ad featuring debonair Cavett. The Times obituary reported that David Taub told Wine Spectator that sales of Cavit went from 500,000 cases of mostly Pinot Grigio in two years to three million cases by 2010.

“Pinot Grigio had a balance and a crispness and he really thought that was something that the American consumer would gravitate to,” Marc told us. “He thought Soave, the earlier renditions of it, some of it had a bitter quality to it, flavor notes that he wanted to get away from.” As Cavit’s Pinot Grigio took off in America, grape growers in Trentino were persuaded to grow more of it so some ripped out Chardonnay which had initially been planted to go into the sparkling Trentodoc wines.

For the Infiné Pinot Grigio, Marc tasked Cavit, a formidable collection of cooperatives to which 4,500 family-owned growers contribute grapes, and Carlo Ferrini, one of Italy’s most famous winemakers, with finding the right high-elevation sites and the right clones of Pinot Grigio. Those efforts included Cavit’s winemaker, Fabrizio Marinconz, and an interactive digital platform called PICA that analyzes in real time water needs, soil types, weather and other aspects of vineyards to assist in the use of best agricultural practices.

After separately vinifying grapes from several sites for three years, the team chose two high-elevation sites, “uncommon positions,” Marinconz called them. The two old-vine vineyards had low yields of grapes of great character that ripened a little earlier than others due to the warming breezes from Lake Garda nearby. The grapes are hand-picked and whole-cluster pressed. The wine is then fermented and aged in stainless steel. The first vintage, 2015, was released in 2017, which confounded some restaurants accustomed to young and fresh Pinot Grigio.

Marinconz, who we met in 2019 on a trip to the region to taste Trentodoc sparkling wines, said Cavit made 10,000 bottles (around 830 cases) of the 2017 Pinot Grigio, the current vintage.

The 2017 we were sent and the 2016 we then purchased were both age-worthy and unlike any other Pinot Grigio we’d had. John said, “I’d serve this to wine snobs and not tell them until later that it was Pinot Grigio. They’d be blown away.”

“A Pinot Grigio of substance. Some weight, lots of minerals and real presence. Fine acidity. This is a real white-tablecloth white, long finish that heads toward rich,” we wrote of the 2017, $33.

Of the 2016, $26.99, we wrote, “Remarkable. Explodes in the mouth with rich, white-grape tastes, almost like it has been boiled down to its essence. No Pinot Grigio basically tastes like this. This is five years old and it would age beautifully for more years.”

The At Last Cuvée Bianco, $55, comes from vineyards at the feet of the Dolemites and is a blend of mostly Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc with small amounts of Gewürztraminer and Riesling. It is a statuesque wine, age-worthy and attention-grabbing in a good way. Palm Bay said around 40 cases of that were made in 2017, the current vintage. With At Last, Marc said, “We wanted to show what Trentino was capable of, with a white wine that would accentuate it and take it to another level.”

Our notes, condensed: “Extraordinary wine, very classy, with elegance, richness and weight.”

Marc grew up watching his dad and grandfather working together in an enviably close relationship. The younger Taub recalls him and his two brothers, who are not in the family business, wincing when Martin, who died in 1999, did tricks with spoons and wine glasses in fancy restaurants or delivered his trademark bad puns. By the time David died, Marc had worked with him for 20 years, soaking up David’s marketing instincts and loyalty for the people he worked with. And yes, his love of Italy and its people and its culture. Every year, when the distribution part of the company closed for two weeks, David would take the whole family to Italy “to experience all of our various suppliers and all that Italy had to show,” Marc told us.

The dark green glass and the uniquely shaped bottles used for Infiné 1939 reflect David’s love of Italian glass and were designed by Italian artisans. “Whether I was with him or not, he would bring back a piece of glass. It could be a glass, a decanter, a chandelier, a statue. He loved Italian glass, Venetian glass, Murano glass. He’d remember a story of where he was when he bought it with my mom.

“When you do a special mold for a project, it’s not a simple thing to do, especially for something that’s kind of limited. So I wanted something that would be special, that no one could copy and utilize. You can change the shoulders, some type of aspect of it and soon everyone is using it, but these cuts are so special,” he said. The label is inset and there’s an infinity sign on them, and the glass is dark to protect the wine.

“In the initial days, we packed it in wood, as if it were a red wine. We wanted to create the right ambience to deliver that message that this is special. Too often gatekeepers put a fence around Pinot Grigio,” Marc said. “We wanted something that delivered in the package and in the glass and on its own, all the way through.”  

We’d say he accomplished what he set out to do and more. The wines are remarkable in their finesse, length, cohesiveness and ageability. Still, we wondered how the market was responding to them, especially the Pinot Grigio, which far too many people reflexively sneer at.

“When we first started, it took a little time to convince the wholesalers and gatekeepers on getting there. We were a little concerned,” Marc told us. “Some didn’t get it. But it’s getting easier and easier. My son Jake has been hand-selling it, too, and stimulating our team. More people are truly understanding it and it’s starting to get the level of respect and attention it deserves.”

And how would David, his father, react to Infiné 1939?

“I think he would be thrilled by what the product represents. I don’t know that he would love being in the spotlight,” Marc said, sounding a lot like many of us describing our wonderful, humble fathers. “I think he would be appreciative that we wanted to do that for him.”

Dorothy J. Gaiter and John Brecher conceived and wrote The Wall Street Journal's wine column, "Tastings," from 1998 to 2010. Dorothy and John have been tasting and studying wine since 1973. In 2020, the University of California at Davis added their papers to the Warren Winiarski Wine Writers Collection in its library, which also includes the work of Hugh Johnson and Jancis Robinson. Dottie has had a distinguished career in journalism as a reporter, editor, columnist and editorial writer at The Miami Herald, The New York Times, and at The Journal. John was Page One Editor of The Journal, City Editor of The Miami Herald and a senior editor at Bloomberg News. They are well-known from their books and many television appearances, especially on Martha Stewart's show, and as the creators of the annual, international "Open That Bottle Night" celebration of wine and friendship. The first bottle they shared was André Cold Duck. They have two daughters.

Banner art by Piers Parlett

Now Librandi is led by the fourth-generation. Paolo, his brother Raffaele, and their two cousins are looking to increase awareness of Calabrian wine by promoting their unique terroir and native grape varieties.

In October 2018, Marco Salerno interviewed Paolo Librandi from Librandi in New York City.

Marco Salerno: Welcome to Grape Collective. So how did the Librandi family get into the wine business?

Paolo Librandi: Actually in Cirò it was very easy that people were making wine home, so I think we can go back to my great-grandfather's time. But actually my grandfather Raffaele was the first one who started to build a small winery in the old town of Cirò Marina and started to bottle and then label the wine. This started in 1953 and then my uncle Antonio was his first son and my father Nicodemi later expanded it a lot. Now it's me, my brother and my cousins taking it on. It was always in the family. My house is in the property where the winery is, so everything was about wine since I was born, basically.

Your life has been about wine since day one. How is Librandi different today? It seems that Librandi is among the most recognizable producers from Calabria. How did it get to that point?

Well, my grandfather, when he finished his career, basically he left six hectares of vineyards to his kids. With six hectares he was able to grow six kids and to have two of them to study, to be graduates. Back then you could still do that. But then at a certain point, especially when my father who is the youngest wanted to join the business, they started to point at a different market like restaurants and specialized retailers of course.

At that point they started to hire the first oenologist to make investments, and we started to make the Cirò Riserva and then we bought the first property out of Cirò. There was a period where we planted a lot of international varieties, but then we went back to the native varieties again by the end of the '90s, which is what really identifies us now.

So through the years we started to export, and little by little we expanded to the point that we made the biggest investment by the end of the '90s where we bought a big property and we made vineyards there. So in the end, now we have 230 hectares of vineyards and we export to approximately 35 markets out of Italy. Ours is probably the first winery that really worked to arrive to a certain size and to export and to open the market for wines of Calabria, definitely. We gained that position and are working hard to keep it.

Awesome. That's a major feat. Tell me a little bit about the territory that your winery is located in in Cirò.

Our territory is definitely special, like many others winemaking areas, but there's something about our territory that is incredible in my opinion, and everything comes to the biodiversity that you can find there in terms of varieties, but in terms of anything. Cirò Marina, where the winery is located and so Cirò which is the main DOC, you have to imagine all the vineyards are very close to the sea. The influence of the sea is very evident. If you make a tasting through all of our wines, you will recognize the salinity of the wines very evidently. But you have to imagine that from the town of Cirò Marina, if you drive only one hour, fifty minutes, I would say you could ski.

So you go from the sea level to 7,500 feet, and so this besides being beautiful itself brings a crazy biodiversity because you can have on the very same day seafood at lunch and then drive a little bit, take a walk in the national park and have an amazing Porcini mushroom-based dinner. So this tells a lot about the territory and also about the grapes. In Cirò the traditional grapes are the Greco Bianco for the whites and the Gaglioppo for the reds.

But there's so many others that can have a special place in the wine market, and I foresee they will in the future. We're working hard for that, because grapes like the Magliocco, Mantonico, Greco Nero, Guarnaccia, Nerello and so many. We collected 200 that we're studying since more than 20 years now. So imagine this tells a lot.

Then the soil is special. The main component is clay. With a good component of limestone too, but clay is important because it's a very dry area. So it's all about clay, but also the training system. We head train the vines traditionally. What we call albarello, you know?

Very short plants with the bunches very close to the ground. They take beautiful advantage by the heating of the soil. So you have perfect ripeness and viticulture is incredible there. The skills that the workers have down in Cirò are amazing. We're talking about an area where winemaking started over 25 centuries ago and the tradition was never interrupted. So it's somehow in the blood of the people there.

All of us since we were kids had somebody in the family who had a vineyard, and we help harvest and making the wine and participate to the harvest, which is a beautiful ritual. It's really in our blood and if you go and take a walk in the vineyards, the skills that you can see of the vintners are amazing. The way they prune, the way they are sensitive to the plants. 

Can you tell me more about your terroir, soils and their influence on the wine?

Absolutely. This is actually a very interesting question, because in Cirò there's a situation which is similar to some other areas of Italy like the Barolo, Barbaresco area or I might think also about Burgundy, in the sense that there are specific areas that give you specific characteristics. In the future there could also be the possibility to make somehow some subzones or cru concept in Cirò, because it's pretty composite, I would say.

The majority of the soil as I said is clay with a good component of limestone. But then there are microclimates that change easily. For example, there's a very important area very close to the sea, where you might think that it's sandy, but instead it's not sandy. There's sort of a red clay that gives the wine a very important structure. The tannins of the grapes coming from that area are very important, are tannins that you can compare to the tannins of the great wines. The color might be a little bit clear but the structure and age-ability of the wine in this area is amazing.

There are also more inland areas like where we have our estate, which is a subzone exactly where you have still clay but maybe a little less structure, but maybe a little bit more color. So there's a fresher situation in terms of microclimate there, so you develop different characteristics.

There are other areas instead where it could be maybe sandier, where you can make amazing rosé or very good white wines, so it's very composite. Of course the predominant situation is clay, whether more red clay close to the sea or more saline clay on the hills inside, but clay and good component of limestone is definitely the majority of the soil.

Can you talk a little bit more about the different grape varieties that you work with?

Absolutely. Well, the most important varieties are Greco Bianco and Gaglioppo. With the Greco Bianco we can make very nice, refreshing flavored fruit-driven wines with good acidity and also a good viscosity, I would say, that really pair well with a variety of different foods. Of course in Calabria we have many kiosks on the beach where you can have very nice seafood like octopus, sea bass, shellfish, where you can definitely pair the Greco Bianco with that.

Then there's the Gaglioppo which is our main variety. It's a variety that you can use in many different ways. For example, rosé is traditional in Calabria. You can make amazing rosé with the Gaglioppo or pleasant, lively daily reds, but also you can make very important riservas. You can make longer maceration and get wines that might remind you of a Pinot Noir with a little bit more kick. Sort of a breed of Pinot Noir, Nebbiolo kind of thing, that definitely people will enjoy. Medium-bodied, complex and enjoyable wines at the same time. I'd find really a big pleasure in having a glass of Gaglioppo.

These are also wines that are very versatile, very easy to pair with food and very distinctive with huge personality. I think that 100% Gaglioppo wine in a blind tasting is often something that you easily can recognize. It's not easy to confuse it with anything else. It's very distinctive. So those are varieties that of course you need to work well in the vineyards like all of the others, but with the Gaglioppo you need to get to a perfect ripeness to make great wines, but once you get there the satisfaction is amazing.

What about Mantonico?

The Mantonico is a variety that in the last decades nearly, I could say, disappear. It was basically used mostly in the very south of Calabria to make passito, which we do too these days. But the Mantonico has many different uses. Now we have a dry version which is actually our top white, but also other wineries are investing in the Mantonico because it gives you wines with a very good character and personality. This is a variety that can get really ripe, but still keeps very well the acidity. We created a white wine that can go through the years easily and age very well. But some others that may be a different interpretation, but it's a very important variety.

Another interesting variety that we're investing on is the Magliocco. Has completely different character than the Gaglioppo. We're talking about a variety that produces very low yield naturally, with a different concentration, different color, different flavor profile. The Magliocco plays more on darker fruit, spice, the color is of course more concentrated. It's a very interesting wine. You could compare maybe with some ... just to give you an idea, because then the variety is definitely different. It has some similarities with some Shiraz or some Malbec, but just if I have to force a comparison. So those are the main four native varieties that we focused on. As I said before there are many others that you could still use.

It seems like Calabria has amazing wine, a rich, historic territory and delicious food.

You bet!

What's your philosophy on winemaking?

Our philosophy is easy to understand if you come visit us. You would see we have a very nice winery with all the technology and the equipment we need. But our biggest investments and our biggest attention was always in the vineyards. We're really proud of our vineyards, from the way they look like to the quality of the grapes they give you. So it's all about that. To work in a certain way in the vineyards, follow the creation of quality step-by-step, since the very moment at where you plant the vine and then the way you follow all the work you have to do in the vineyards to have perfect grapes, including the harvest and every single detail.

Because quality happens in the vineyards and, most of all, if you really invest in the vineyards and keep on making the wines, then the personality that the wine gets is another level. Every year if you're passionate with that single vineyard wine you can taste it and basically recognize it, even if there's a vintage variation. So our philosophy is definitely vineyard-driven and terroir-driven, because when you have the vineyards in the right places that they really speak with the people that drink the wine, speak of that terroir. So that's definitely our philosophy.

So what are the next steps for Librandi?

We're still working hard in the research. There are some spaces in our portfolio that could be filled with ancient varieties that we can bring back. So for sure in the next one or two years there's going to be a couple of important news in our portfolio, but we still work on our Greco Bianco and Gaglioppo, we still make clonal selection, we're still working hard on that because there was no scientific literature there. So we're definitely following the tradition, but on the other hand we're understanding better and better every year how to take the best out of our own varieties.

If wines of the past were diluted, then the powerful wines based on Xinomavro grown in Naoussa today are a complete one-eighty. Dense, tannic, and concentrated, Xinomavro is the only grape allowed to be used in wines displaying the Naoussa Appellation of Superior Quality-- the Greek equivalent to the AOC and DOC of France and Italy. In 1971 Naoussa was the first wine growing region in Greece to be granted an Appellation of Superior Quality.

Naoussa lies in the mountainous Macedonia of north-central Greece. This continental interior gets chillier than the sunny Greek islands. The best sites for Xinomavro face south and get much-needed sun for ripening while still benefiting from cool alpine breezes. Other grapes are grown in Naoussa without the Appellation of Superior Quality, as that is just reserved for Xinomavro. Assyrtiko is a white famous for its production on the island of Santorini but results in a unique wine when grown on the mainland in the cooler more mountainous Macedonia.

Xinomavro is a beautiful grape. Even the entry-level bottling form Thymiopoulos Vineyards, the "Young Vines Xinomavro," has a deep, expressive aromatic profile. A tasting note often associated with Xinomavro is tomato leaf, because the wines are so savory yet still lifted and bright.

In the village of Trilofos is the Thymiopoulos winery where winemaker Apostolos Thymiopoulos focuses on making terroir-driven wines expressing their unique origin while praciting organic and biodymanic viticulture. I spoke with Apostolos about the history of the estate and the challenges and gifts of growing Xinomavro in Naoussa. 

Jackson: What is the family history of Thymiopoulos? How did you get to where you are today?

Apostolos Thymiopoulos: My family's growing vines and selling the grapes for years in some traditional wineries here. In 2003, when I finished my studies, I started to produce wine. I started with my my family land. This is four hectares and today we have a 38. All the vines are under organic certification. We started doing biodynamic 2009 and focus to Xinomavro. The main variety is Xinomavro, 90%. We also have some other wines, Assyrtiko.

What did the 2020 vintage look like? Were there any challenges?

2020? Not a difficult vintage. We had time to do the harvest, to pick the grapes. We have some rains, but every year we have rains in Naoussa because we are in the mountains. Sometimes it's nice for varieties like Xinomavro because the water from the rain, they don't become very strong and very dry.

When you decided to start doing biodynamics, what sparked that?

I started to export a lot. I started from Europe and to do the sales, I visited France very often and there I met friends doing biodynamics and I saw that biodynamics is not only marketing. It's very nice for the quality of the grapes.

How does that fit into your personal philosophy of winemaking? 

Every year is different. For me, this is very important. Don't produce every year the same wine because it will be boring for the consumer. Every year, the temperatures, the rain, the sun, everything...sometimes hail storms. Unfortunately, we're out in nature, so we can have some problems sometimes. And every year the yeasts don't produce the same aromatic profile. And this is a big beauty for our world, the wine world. So I leave the vines free to give every year the fruit that they want. Also, my family for years has farms with animals, cows to goats to sheep, and it's an ecosystem. The animals give their manure to the vines, the vines give us of course the grapes. 

So Xinomavro is 90% of the plantings, you have different bottlings under Xinomavro. What challenges does the grape provide,  how do you use it to produce wines of different styles?

Xinomavro is really very dynamic variety. It's high acid. The name: xino- means sharp and translates in wine with a higher acidity. It's a tannic variety. This is very important to the winemaker, to manage the tannins, to produce very strong and green tannins. If you want to produce good quality grapes with no strong tannins or green seeds, you have to manage the yields of the vines. This is the answer for me. Of course, organic and biodynamic give and save us low quantities. And the low quantities produce good tannins that are very fruity, very good wines.

So, we have vineyards in two villages, Trilofos and Fytia. Trilofos is in about 200 meters and Fytia's 700. You can understand very easily that we pick different fruits of these villages. Very important also is the big differences between the soils. Trilofos is more clay, more heavy soil. This means that the wines produced have more structure, more tannins. From the high altitude with the lower temperature, more humidity, we have more elegant acidity, the tannins are more fine, more thin.

How is the Assyrtiko different in Naoussa than it is from Santorini?

Santorini is really very unique soil. There are only a few places in the world with volcanic soil. The volcanic soil produces very characteristic wines with this minerality and this petrol taste. In Naoussa, the acidity sometimes is higher than Santorini because here we have very high altitude into the forest, the sun is not so strong. It's a variety that gives wines with acidity, not very aromatic. Like Chardonnays, they're growing everywhere.

People say Naoussa is comparable to Barolo. Is that because the Xinomavro grape is compared to Nebbiolo or because the region is similar to Piedmont?

The reason that many people and writers and wine people compare Xinomavro with Nebbiolo, I believe, is the tannic profile. The aromatics are really very different. It's the tannin, because if someone suggests you drink a Nebbiolo wine, first of all, you are afraid of the tannins. The big surprise is when this wine is very nice, beautiful, and delicate. This is the same for Xinomavro. If someone were to offer wine from Xinomavro, traditionally, it was really very difficult to enjoy, especially when the wine was young because of the strong tannins. After phylloxera, the people changed the culture of vinification in Naoussa and planted vineyards with less density of vines. Less density means more grapes per vine. It adds up a big yield.

The big yields are not good for difficult varieties, like the Nebbiolo, like Xinomavro, like Pinot. Today, where the first winery that we planted, replanted again the vineyard with 10,000, 12,000 vines per hectare. 

What is the traditional Greek food that matches Xinomavro for pairings? What are the big hefty dishes that you want to pair with this wine?

Here in my area, we produce 70% of beef meat of Greece. We have a different quality of animals, of beef, of cows here. Also, it's a forest area. We have a wild boar, rabbits, and pork. So the people here love meat, and this is a good combination with the tannins of the variety. Also, traditionally in Greek, we use a lot of vegetables, tomatoes, all the vegetables.

What would you like American wine audiences to know about Greek wines that they might not know?

I believe that it's not big risk for someone not to invest, but to buy and try, to discover something not only from Greece but from some other areas. Invest in some bottles for aging to see after some years and not only because the wine will be maybe more expensive, but they can't find these wines after some years.

It’s not news that Texas is making some very good wine. We’ve enjoyed them for many years – John first wrote about them in 1983 for Newsweek. In 2000, we conducted a blind Presidential Taste-Off between the wines of George W. Bush’s Texas and Al Gore’s Tennessee. Texas won. Back then, there were 37 wineries in Texas. Today, there are more than 400 and the amount of bearing acreage soared from 3,800 in 2015 to 5,020 four years later, according to the latest statistics from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

In 2010, Tannat was not a blip on the USDA’s charts. By 2015, there were 28 acres. In 2019, there were 120, making it the 13^th most widely planted grape in the state (Cabernet Sauvignon is first and Tempranillo is second).

Tannat is not well-known. It’s grown in France, especially in Madiran in the Southwest, and it seemed ready to have its moment as a specialty of Uruguay about a decade ago, though we can’t say we see it often these days. We think of Tannat – red Tannat, that is – as a meaty wine that can tend toward heavy with unruly tannins, if not crafted carefully.

We don’t picture Tannat as a rosé and certainly not a sparkling rosé, though there’s no reason it can’t be. So when we opened the Bending Branch 2020 Frizzante, which costs $22, we expected to find a perfectly pleasant, somewhat sweet, generic bubbly rosé. We were wrong. “It’s lean, angular and dry,” we wrote. “This is a really fine hand. There’s some peach on the nose and a bluish tint that’s hard to describe. We wouldn’t serve this by the pool – we’d serve it with dinner. It’s a white-tablecloth rosé with good acidity. They’ve made a rosé sparkler out of Tannat and kept the varietal. Impressive.”

Robert W. Young (photo right), a physician; his wife, Brenda; and their daughter, Alison, founded Bending Branch in Texas Hill Country in 2009.  It is located in Comfort, which is north of San Antonio and southwest of Austin. Along with John Rivenburgh of Kerrville Hills Winery, Dr. Bob, as Young is known, is one of Tannat’s biggest supporters in Texas. Bending Branch, which sent us samples, makes 20,000 cases of wine, of which about 25% are some form of Tannat. We also liked its red Tannat, which we felt had more structure than most we have tried over the years.

We were eager to speak with Young, who is 74, to ask what kind of sorcery is this. His responses have been edited and condensed for space. Bending Branch ships to most states and we want to emphasize this: Excellent wine is being made all over the U.S. Especially as we emerge from the pandemic, your local winery needs and deserves your support.

What inspired you to found Bending Branch?

I was a physician. I had about 35 years in medicine, the last 14 years in Atlanta. I had the opportunity to sell my practice and my daughter had moved to Texas. We started visiting here and we wanted to have the family close together so we moved to Texas. I am not one to sit still, or not be doing things, doing creative things, new things, and I’ve always been passionate about wine, particularly red wines. Once I learned that, hey, people can make wine out here, I just said, bingo, I could do this. I enrolled in UC Davis and did the online training in winemaking and got a certificate and learned the academic side and we started looking for property to grow grapes.     

How many acres do you have?

That’s sort of a long question. We have 56 acres on the estate. We started planting in 2009 – I put the first Tannat vine in the ground in April or May of 2009. We started out planting different things because Texas is still a very young winegrowing region and it’s not totally sorted out which things grow best in various areas of the state. We planted different varieties over about five years, a total of 16 acres. That’s the good part of the story. The bad part of the story is that we’re in a region that’s endemic to Pierce’s Disease [which is carried by the glassy-winged sharpshooter]. We had a couple of years of very heavy rain which led to an increase in the sharpshooter population and we got infected. We lost our vines about five years ago. We had to start over, which we’re doing now. [The wines are made from Texas grapes except a small number of favorites that Young started making in the early years when Bending Branch needed some California fruit because there wasn’t enough grown in Texas. They are clearly labeled. The new plantings are resistant to Pierce’s Disease.]

Your Tannats seemed to have more structure and texture than we’d expect. How come?

I have different ways of making wines here. One is whole-berry fermentation. Everything is done by hand. That approach gives you a little bit of carbonic maceration, which brings out fruit a little bit more and helps tame the tannins. The second is cryomaceration. We basically destem the fruit and then we freeze it and we keep it frozen for several weeks, then we thaw it out and we ferment it just like before, in open-top bins. We get about 25 percent more color extracted [from the grape skins into the wine] and about 50 percent more tannins extracted. That creates a little less of a rustic wine. You get a little bit more elegant wine, a little more aromatic. The final thing we do is use flash détente. You heat the grapes up to 185 degrees for a very short period of time – five or 10 minutes -- and then you transfer the must into a vacuum chamber, which rapidly cools it. You essentially double the extraction of the color compounds and the tannins. It makes a big, robust wine that is also well structured.

One of the reasons I do these things in Texas is because of our short growing season we have a dilemma – our fruit gets sugar ripe pretty quickly but you will not have phenolic maturity [which involves tannins] in most years [which can cause bitterness and lack of balance]. With these techniques, we are able to deal with that lack of phenolic maturity.

Natural wine is a big deal these days. Do these techniques make your wine less natural?

No, they’re all natural processes. Freezing? Cold? We use heat and cold all the time traditionally in winemaking.  

You are particularly interested in Tannat. Why Tannat?

There was a landmark publication in 2006 in Nature by Roger Corder. The essence of the paper was that there is a chemical in red wine that demonstrates protective effects on the vascular system. And that compound is procyanidin, a mid-chain tannin. So I got really interested in that. Then Roger wrote a book called “The Red Wine Diet” and he started studying wines from all over the world in his laboratory for which wines had the most procyanidins in them. It turns out that Tannat is really right up there at the top. So I got even more interested in Tannat because of that. I said I’m a doctor, I am trained in public health. It would be nice if the wine I made had some health benefit.

How much of the Frizzante do you make?

We made 250 cases of the Frizzante, and it’s so popular we’re doubling production. This was the third year of production.

How do you make it?

We pick this Tannat early to get a higher level of acidity in it. We do tank fermentation and we do it temperature controlled and try to have a slow fermentation – this one was 27 days, which is pretty long for a fermentation. We also use a yeast that is known to produce a little more fruity flavors. And also we put French oak staves in the tanks. [The finished wine was injected with CO2 to add the bubbles.]

While wine is produced commercially all over the U.S., we find that not all consumers are enthusiastic about the wines from their own states. How about Texas?

The support from customers in Texas is fantastic. Texans are really proud of Texas-made products and supporting Texas businesses. The support is there. For example, let’s take Tannat. When I planted Tannat in 2009 there was almost none in the state. Now it’s one of the most grown varietals in Texas. Obviously, people are buying the wine. You have to have local support and open-mindedness to be able to do that. If I had this winery plop down in Napa, I’m sure I’d be selling very little wine because everybody’s looking for Cab and Chardonnay.

We live in such a politicized time and Texas seems to be at least as divided as everywhere else. How do you keep politics out of the winery?

We train and instruct all of our staff just not to talk politics or religion. So we just basically don’t do it. On the other hand, related to the pandemic – I don’t consider it a political issue, but lots of people consider it a political issue. In my career, I ran two state health departments [Arkansas and Kentucky]. I am all about public health. We have been likely the safest place to visit or among the safest wineries to visit because we implemented incredibly strict protocols throughout the year. We’ve lost a little business because of it because some people come in and say you’ve got to wear a mask and they turn around and leave. But our approach is let’s do what’s right. Sometimes doing what’s right isn’t necessarily the best thing for business, but I don’t want anybody to get sick, I don’t want anybody to die from this thing. I’m very proud that we have 94 percent of our 34 employees who are completely immunized. I just told our staff the other day if the rest of the world had the same level of immunization that we did, this pandemic would be over.

Dorothy J. Gaiter and John Brecher conceived and wrote The Wall Street Journal's wine column, "Tastings," from 1998 to 2010. Dorothy and John have been tasting and studying wine since 1973. In 2020, the University of California at Davis added their papers to the Warren Winiarski Wine Writers Collection in its library, which also includes the work of Hugh Johnson and Jancis Robinson. Dottie has had a distinguished career in journalism as a reporter, editor, columnist and editorial writer at The Miami Herald, The New York Times, and at The Journal. John was Page One Editor of The Journal, City Editor of The Miami Herald and a senior editor at Bloomberg News. They are well-known from their books and many television appearances, especially on Martha Stewart's show, and as the creators of the annual, international "Open That Bottle Night" celebration of wine and friendship. The first bottle they shared was André Cold Duck. They have two daughters.

Banner art by Piers Parlett

But the use of synthetic chemicals did not sit well with Rudolf Niedermayr. As a wine grower in Alto Adige, a strikingly beautiful region on the Italian side of the Alps, Niedermayr wanted to work with nature, not bully it. A visionary, he could see how the repeated use of powerful insecticides and fertilizers would destroy the environment. By the mid-1980s he had switched to organic viticulture and his vineyards thrived under his care for decades.

Since 2012, Thomas Niedermayr has taken his father’s baton and run with it. At Thomas Niedermayr Hof Gandberg winery, the whole winemaking process—from grape to bottle—unfolds in the most natural way. Niedermayr has eliminated the need for sprays, even organically-allowed copper and sulphur, by planting fungus-resistant ‘PIWI’ grape varieties. The vineyards are teeming with biodiversity; there are a multitude of fruit and vegetable crops, as well as livestock, bees, spiders, and snakes. In the cellar, the natural process continues: fermentation occurs solely with the use of native yeasts, and the wines are unfiltered and unfined. 

Two of the three Thomas Niedermayr wines I sampled are made from grapes that were unfamiliar to me: Bronner and Solaris, born from a crossing of mostly European and North American varieties. The third wine, ‘Sonnrain,’ is a blend of Solaris, Muscaris & Traminer. All three express vibrant energy and striking freshness. And, while the fruit notes—tropical, citrus and stone—are present, the wines lean in a more savory direction, with remarkable mineral, vegetal and herbal notes.

I caught up with Thomas Niedermayr in March by email to find out more about how he makes deliciously imperfect and charismatic wines.

Your father was a visionary winemaker of Alto Adige. Can you tell us more about him and the
history of the winery, including how it got its name, Hof Gandberg?
Our winery lies at the foot of the “Gandberg”, a mountain that rises 800 meters high. The “Gandberg” is our house mountain, as we call it in South Tyrol. My father was a visionary, yes, as he comes from a time (1960s to 80s) where very toxic synthetical-chemical pesticides were the norm. He always was environmentally-conscious and felt connected to nature so the whole system didn’t make sense to him and he felt that this was not the way to build a (better) future. In the 80s, he joined environmental groups and it became clear to him that he wanted to work in a healthy way, produce high quality foods and work in a way that does not exploit nature but preserves and gives back. He eventually found his way to organic agriculture which was very new and unknown to most people. Organically produce foods were not   valued back then, so they had to find their own ways to market. This meant that my father was part of the founding of an organic apple co-operative and he first made wine from his own grapes in 1993. 

In 2012, I took over the winery and since then we have evolved and are evolving constantly. I put the focus on the wines and their unique character. My father made wines in a more “classic” way and I make wines that focus on the depth, complexity, characteristics of each year and varieties. That includes fermentation with vineyard-own yeasts, no fining or filtration and a minimal use of sulfur.

Growing up, did you always think you would be a part of the wine business or did you ever want to do something else?
After middle school, I did my apprenticeship as a carpenter and worked in this job for approximately 10 years! I have five siblings and none of us initially thought about taking over the winery. I grew in it and step by step was fascinated more and more by the process of grapes becoming wine and working with nature. But in my heart, I am still a craftsman, an agricultural craftsman. Before I took over the winery, I completed a professional school for wine and worked abroad. Only when I had an idea of how I wanted to lead the winery was when I decided to come back and take over.

Your winery is located in Alto Adige, within the larger Trentino-Alto Adige wine appellation. Can you tell us a little bit more about your land in terms of its natural environment?
In South Tyrol we are surrounded by mountains, right behind the farm there are mountains up to 1800 meters high. There are mixed forests and of course a lot of cultivated areas with wine and apples. In Eppan, where we live and work, we are in the heart of the largest wine growing area of South Tyrol. In our vicinity, we have several lakes and it is a historical area with castles and palaces. Our climate is strongly influenced by the mediterranean climate since the main valley is open to the south. Nevertheless, it gets cold in autumn and winter because we are also influenced by the alpine climate. Historically, our region is known for cultivating wine, apples, apricots, pears and plums.

Most of the winemaking culture of Trentino-Alto Adige is centered on co-operatives. Why is that and how is it to be an independent winemaker in the region?
The co-operatives have a long tradition. It dates back to times of crisis, around the end of the 19th century. In this region, a lot of farms are small, the average grape farmer has less than one hectare. With forming co-operatives, they were able to join forces, especially when it comes to vinification and marketing of the wines.

In the early 90s, the “independent winemakers (vignerons) of South Tyrol” formed and they have been the rebels, outlaws and seen almost as extremists. But that step was important, also to build a healthy competition that motivates, and the quality level of the wine all over the South Tyrol has risen. Today these independent winemakers make up 7% and all winegrowers have become closer again. We have a good exchange of knowledge and information and come together as a community.

You make wines, known as PIWI, from fungus-resistant grape varieties. What does PIWI stand for and can you tell us more?
Piwi is short for “pilzwiderstandsfähig” in German and simply means fungus resistant. We’ve been working with fungus resistant varieties for almost 30 years. The name “Piwi” was given when farmers built an organization that focuses on growing these varieties and exchanging knowledge on how to farm, which varieties to plant, and to learn about new varieties. The research into resistant grape varieties started over 250 years ago, but this was just in wine. It is a natural process to select plants that are better and stronger and cultivate them. Farmers have done that for thousands of years. It is about finding varieties that are robust and able to survive without massive use of pesticides which have climate changing impact.

Piwis bring many advantages, like a soil that is not compressed due to heavy use of machine work. They give us the answer to many questions and problems we have in today’s wine growing. We are able to harvest healthy, high quality grapes and make elegant, complex and long-living wines.

What is your philosophy of winemaking?
My goal is to produce elegant, distinct and complex wines that are of high value. This is the challenge and what I strive for. My philosophy is to intervene as little as possible and give the wines my patience, to give each of them the time they need. I am very careful with my wines; I fully expose the must to oxidation but work in a reductive way when must becomes wine. I leave them on the lees for a long time and our cellar is very purist and clean, to make working there easy and practical and also reduce the wines’ exposure to microbes.

What does being a natural winemaker mean to you?
For me it means to strive for the highest quality, always having the full cycle in mind. Everything has to work together, from growing vines to cellar work, the craftsmanship and your senses. Natural wine is an expression of the interplay of humans and nature. We see that great things arise when the parameters are balanced. Natural wine is a stretchable word, like sustainability. The human aspect plays a big role, as well as the quality of life and work. For me it is important to see the holistic context about natural wine and not focus solely on whether it is unfined and unfiltered.

Another aspect of being a natural winemaker is the great community we have. I have been able to build friendships beyond wine since it is not just about wine but about how your thought processes are, how you view and live agriculture. You meet like-minded people, feel understood and you have the same visions and ideals. We exchange information and values on a great level and evolve together.

Have you ever thought about planting more marketable varieties like Chardonnay or Sauvignon Blanc?
Never! It would be like asking “Do you want to drink wines that make sure that our soil, environment and ground water is full of pesticides as well as finding these pesticides in your glass of wine at the end?” And if if you said yes, we would have to go different ways.

There are a lot of different Piwi varieties and the challenge is to find the ones that are suitable for the soil, location and climate. Our wine surely has edges and corners, but not for the fact that it is made from Piwi but because they are handcrafted wines that speak of where they come from. We face the responsibility we have: a respect of nature, our fellow humans and the ones that will come after us. The current market-system is too short-term. Of course, I would make more profit with planting Chardonnay but what will last at the end? The way we capitalize today has no future.

Let’s talk about biodiversity. Why is it so important to you? What else lives on and grows on your land besides grapes?
Grapes are our main culture, but we have apples too. Both are permanent cultures that stay for years and decades. To break up this monosystem we are working towards regenerative agriculture. That means we are binding a lot of carbon in our soil, which is essential to protect our climate. We have a lively, healthy soil today after working for decades with resistant varieties, minimizing the number of times we have to drive in the vineyards in general, and not using fertilizer for over 30 years now. This also leads to a better nutrient cycle where the vines are able to absorb nutrients and minerals better. Between our vines we grow grains like spelt or emmer, and also corn, potatoes, and pumpkins. Alternate rows stay covered with plants like leguminosae, wild plants and all kinds of flowering crops.

The bloom range is so important for insects that are attracted by pollen and nectar. The more biodiversity we have in flora and fauna, the more a natural balance prevails without us humans having to intervene. You can feel that a vineyard is part of nature when go through the rows or work with the wines and you hear all the buzzing and bugs, butterflies, bumblebees and bees flying around you. It is something that we humans can feel.

Your winery is a member of the Bioland association. Can you tell us about this organization?
Bioland is our organic association which was founded 50 years ago in Germany. My father was one of the founding members of Bioland here in South Tyrol. It was important back then for the farmers to have a platform to exchange information and knowledge, to have people to talk to and ask questions and learn together from shared experiences. It is still important for those reasons today and beyond. Bioland does valuable work since it not only cares about us farmers but works on change on a political level, participates in agricultural politics. This is so important, since we can only change so much as farmers. Additionally, Bioland is working towards stricter rules in organic agriculture in Europe which are necessary. Bioland South Tyrol has over 1,000 members today and we are proud of it!

What types of vessels do you use to age your wines?
We use wood and steel. Our wooden barrels are usually between 500 and 1000 liters and we focus on neutral and/or used wooden barrels.

How many bottles of wine do you make each year and what percentage are exported?
We produce 40,000 bottles each year. Most of our wines are shipped nationally here in Italy. This dynamic changed recently, also due to the Coronavirus when Italy was so restricted. We are represented in several other countries today, mostly in restaurants and specialized shops. We see a strong evolution in export but it is changing a lot these days.

What do you enjoy most about being a winemaker?
The community of people with the same visions and ideals, people who value food and drinks and how they are made. Also the diversity of work, especially on a small farm like we are, every day brings a new adventure. One of the most exciting parts of a year for me is harvest, we work all year towards it and these days are so crucial and you set in stone what should happen with the wines. Accompanying the wines and watching their evolution is fascinating to me.

What do you find the most challenging?
Maybe the bureaucracy! It is getting to be more and more. The marketing is a challenge too, we work in a very competitive market and wine consumption is regressing in most countries. To find my place is a challenge.

Which regional dishes do you pair with your wines?
A go to is our traditional board with speck, regional cheeses, antipasti and fresh bread. It is quick to make and I think easy to pair with all of our wines. Then schluzer, which are a bit like Ravioli and we make them with spinach or pumpkin filling for example. Different kinds of knödel (dumplings) with cheese, spinach, beetroot or other goods of the season. We eat very seasonally, make our own pasta and bread from the grains in our vineyards and eat a lot of vegetables and fruit that grow on the farm. Something great we discovered last year is pesto out of our young vines’ shoots! With freshly made pasta, it is heaven. We rarely eat meat and if we do, it is rabbit or rooster that grew up next to us.

Outside of Alto Adige, what are some of your favorite wines?
I adore my Slovenian colleagues which work with lots with skin contact wines, like Klinec. I have a lot of good colleagues from Austria—I am fascinated by Sepp Muster, Andreas Tscheppe and many more. I also enjoy wines from France, from the Jura where I am fond of their acidity and freshness. I don’t have one favorite, for me it is a lot about what ideas, which philosophy, which characters stand behind the wines. I just got to meet Ronald of Winzerhof Linder winery in Germany and I am enthusiastic about his wines, his approach of putting permaculture and probiotic plant protection first—very unconventional methods, but they work. He is also working to be free of the pesticide-industry, which is our goal with Piwis too. We want to be as free as a farm can be.

Wine can be fun, too. There’s no One Way to enjoy it. Different strokes for different folks. We owe the good folks at Gundlach Bundschu Winery in Sonoma County and a special grape for reminding us about all of this. The nudge came in a couple bottles of 2019 Gundlach Bundschu Dry Gewürztraminer that delivered two different and engaging experiences. They were like watching the same Broadway drama but with alternate endings.

Here’s the story. We’ve been fans of Gewürztraminer for a long time. At its best, it has a nose of white pepper, roses and lychee and a lingering taste of spice that’s unlike any other white. Alsace is the home of great Gewürztraminer (ge-vertz-tra-mee-ner), but we’ve also had outstanding ones from Germany, Australia and elsewhere. Over the years, though, it seems most Gewürz that’s supposedly dry is sweet. While intentionally sweet Gewürz can be a treat, when we want dry Gewürz, what we’re longing for is the wonderfully fleshy, high acid, complex versions that pop in our mouths.

When people talk about outstanding Gewürz from California, you’re likely to hear the names of two family-owned wineries: Navarro Vineyards and Winery in the Anderson Valley in Mendocino and Gundlach Bundschu. We consider Navarro’s Dry Gewürz a unicorn wine and we do our happy dance when we find it. We’ve been fans of Gundlach Bundschu for so long that, more than 20 years ago, we visited the winery, bought a bottle of its Kleinberger (which it doesn’t make anymore) and had a picnic with it right there.

(Photo: Jeff Bundschu, president of Gundlach Bundschu Winery, the oldest family-owned winery in California, and a sixth generation winemaker. The year on his hat, 1858, is the year Jacob Gundlach purchased land in Sonoma for his vineyards)

We had had other wines from GunBun, as people call it, but had not recently had its Gewürz until pioneering winemaker David Ramey of Ramey Wine Cellars wrote a couple of years ago that if we loved the Navarro, we had to try the GunBun. The Bundschus read that and sent us the 2018 Gewürz, which we seriously enjoyed with whole, roasted Branzino. We noted the wine’s “spicy, dry, white-pepper prickliness.”

A few weeks ago, the winery sent us two bottles of the 2019, which costs $25. We opened the first with great anticipation and it was … good. We wrote: “Nice nose of lychee and white pepper but no bing on the nose. Taste is pleasant, but lacks intensity, just doesn’t taste like it’s bursting with fruit. Not sweet but not really fleshy. Later, Dottie gets white peach and pepper. Now it’s so much better. Dottie says we should have decanted.” To be fair, Dottie has been frequently suggesting of late that we decant, so often in fact that it’s become sort of a joke between us.

Hmmmmm. Good thing we had a second bottle. We waited a week. This time, Dottie made pork roast, which we consider a classic pairing with Gewürztraminer. The decanter was ready.

Some people decant everything. We don’t often decant because we spend so much time tasting each bottle that we want to reflect on how it changes. This is fun for us. In any case, if we taste a wine and it needs decanting, we can do that, but if we decant and the wine loses something, we can’t get it back.

We decanted the second bottle immediately and pow! The wine became more focused with the extra air and had the intensity we like. We wrote: “Much better bottle. Really focused and pure, bursting with fleshy fruit, white pepper and lychee. Just a remarkable taste. After an hour with even more air and warmth — too much? -- it seems to lose a bit of focus and intensity. The flavors are still good, but it doesn’t pop anymore. Next time we would still decant, but leave it in the fridge the whole time. We actually wish we had a third bottle.”

We appreciate that no two bottles of wine are the same. The wine in a bottle is a living thing that deviates and evolves differently than the wine that went into bottles ahead of it and behind it on the bottling line. If you don’t care how variables like climate, geography and time and temperature can affect the agricultural product we call wine, if you want consistency, drink a soda.

Still, we had rarely played with two bottles of the “same” wine back to back like that, with air and temperature, and we were eager to talk with Jeff Bundschu, president and CEO of Bundschu Company, parent company of Gundlach Bundschu, about our experience. He, his sister Katie and brother Rob Bundschu are part of the sixth generation involved in the family business. Katie’s separate passion project is called Abbot’s Passage Winery and Mercantile.

We called Jeff Bundschu and told him how the wines changed and tasted so different with air and warmth. “I’m kind of getting little chills while you’re saying that. That’s sort of been a telltale sign of a lot of wines off our estate. I think that’s probably because of the strong acid structure that we tend to get no matter what we’re growing.

“There’s no question that letting air in and, to your point, letting it warm up a bit” changes it, said Bundschu, 52, a big fan of aeration. “The juxtaposition with Gewürztraminer is that it’s really refreshing if it’s very cold but it [the cold] is going to restrain some of its nuanced flavors.

“I’m not surprised that that happens and it’s actually great that you caught that. So I basically think that it’s an important thing to remember with wine, especially from cooler regions. When you open the bottle you really do need to remember that it will change for you right in front of you and to think about that. Sometimes you have to be conscious of that happening. ….Wine really does change and that’s one of the things that’s magical about it,” he said.

We couldn’t agree more. It was theater for us, we told him, our entertainment for the night. And, of course, it started with an accomplished, versatile star. In 1858, after Jeff Bundschu’s great, great, great grandfather, Jacob Gundlach, purchased Sonoma land that he named Rhinefarm, Gundlach returned home to Bavaria and wed Eva. On their honeymoon, they traveled through Germany and France collecting rootstock for their Rhinefarm. Gewürztraminer was among the varieties Jacob brought to the Rhinefarm, which is located in what is now the Sonoma Coast AVA. (The Bundschus entered the picture after German immigrant Charles Bundschu joined Gundlach’s wine business in 1868 and seven years later married the eldest of Eva and Jacob Gundlachs’ offspring.)

(Gundlach Bundschu vineyards)

“Gewürztraminer has been a part of our history for the entire time that we’ve been a winery and honestly since my dad sort of reinvigorated the place in the early ’70s. It is our only and main tie to Germany. It holds a special place in our hearts,” Bundschu told us.

The oldest block of Gewürztraminer that the family has now, 11 acres in what it calls its Heritage Block, is 50 years old this year. In the early 2000s, he said, demand for its Gewürztraminer exceeded supply so the family talked to UC-Davis viticulturists about cleaning up its old budwood, which means assuring that it is disease-free and ready for propagation. When told it would take 10 years, the family planted seven acres of an Alsace clone instead in 2008.  “And since then we have begun the process of cleaning up the original budwood and have a source row waiting for us to take and plant when we want to expand it,” Bundschu said. The now 320-acre Rhinefarm boasts steep hillsides and cool valley-floor location vineyards where a variety of grape types are sustainably farmed in 60 separate blocks.

The family’s dry Gewürztraminer, of which it makes 3,000 cases each year, is distributed nationally and sells out, half going to the mailing list and half to restaurants and select stores.

“It’s a cult wine but with a small c,” Bundschu said, laughing. “It’s hard to say. If most people can get through saying Gundlach Bundschu Gewürztraminer, then they have to get through their preconception that it’s likely to be sweet. So it’s never going to grab the headlines in a macro sense. We’re lucky enough to have fans of that but they’ve had to really find it and be introduced to it. They don’t just stumble on it by accident.”

Growing it is a challenge. Fruit set refers to the development of tiny green berries that, with luck, will grow into grapes, an indication of how much fruit could be harvested, data that informs the bottom line big-time.

“It’s the most uneven setting variety that we have. Some years you’re really short and some years you’re pretty long so if you’re going to have any kind of consistent supply you almost have to plant more than you need,” Bundschu told us.

To get advice from another family with experience with Gewürztraminer, this one dating from 1626, he called Jean Trimbach from the legendary Alsace family. “Jean stayed with us and worked the harvest with the Bundschu family at Gundlach Bundschu when I was 16,” Bundschu said. Jean passed along Bundschu’s questions to his brother Pierre, who runs the technical and winemaking part of the business. “He basically just said ‘Get used to it. It’s a varietal that never really sets evenly.’” It’s the first variety GunBun harvests each year and it’s picked in multiple sweeps at night, when the air is cool, to preserve the grapes’ acidity and minerality. Ten percent of the wine is aged in neutral oak and 90% is in stainless steel. The alcohol is a well-balanced 14.3%.

We were surprised to hear about demand for Gewürztraminer outpacing supply. Bundschu said that while some other wineries make dry versions, most Gewürz “gets sold for quite a bit less than ours, in the single digits, and then have a lot more residual sugar. We do ours bone dry.

“We haven’t really been fanatics about ‘no sugar’ over the course of our development. We try to work out what the best balance is. We always lean toward that more bright floral, citrus side of it.

“When it’s dry like that, you do give up a lot of the viscosity and some of the sort of richness that some of the sweeter wines have and we get around that through a technique that our winemaker learned from a winemaker in Burgundy,” Bundschu told us. The grapes are whole-cluster pressed. But before that happens, about 15% of the clusters are frozen for 48 hours, then thawed and pressed. “That simple act of freezing the bunches and then pressing them off… yields a juice that’s really viscous and sort of creates a mouthfeel that is a little similar to what it would feel like if it had sugar in it or a lot of sugar in it,” he explained.

That sounds a lot like playing with grapes.

Santé.

Dorothy J. Gaiter and John Brecher conceived and wrote The Wall Street Journal's wine column, "Tastings," from 1998 to 2010. Dorothy and John have been tasting and studying wine since 1973. In 2020, the University of California at Davis added their papers to the Warren Winiarski Wine Writers Collection in its library, which also includes the work of Hugh Johnson and Jancis Robinson. Dottie has had a distinguished career in journalism as a reporter, editor, columnist and editorial writer at The Miami Herald, The New York Times, and at The Journal. John was Page One Editor of The Journal, City Editor of The Miami Herald and a senior editor at Bloomberg News. They are well-known from their books and many television appearances, especially on Martha Stewart's show, and as the creators of the annual, international "Open That Bottle Night" celebration of wine and friendship. The first bottle they shared was André Cold Duck. They have two daughters.

Banner art by Piers Parlett

Elliott Eglash: Can you tell us a bit about what makes Pinhook unique?

Bill Cromwell: Basically, what we do a little bit differently is we do annual vintages of bourbon, similar to wine. Most brands out there, when they go to bottle their whiskey, they pull thousands of barrels, and more or less blend them together to try and taste the exact same, so that every time you buy a bottle of Buffalo Trace or Woodford Reserve, it’s the exact same product. Nothing wrong with that, by any means.

Reliability, right.

Right, it’s consistency, you know. And there’s a time and a place for that. Our founder was a sommelier for a long time, so we started to look at whiskey a little bit more like wine, where the grain that we’re distilling with, the oak that we’re aging in, the temperature in Kentucky—all these things are going to fluctuate year to year, so the whiskey’s going to inevitably show differently. So when we go to bottle, we taste hundreds of our barrels, select the ones that we think are ready at any given time, and create a new blend, a new flavor profile, and essentially an annual vintage of bourbon. We paired each release with a promising young thoroughbred racehorse. 

What’s the meaning behind the racehorses? They’re real horses. 

They’re all actual racehorses. We actually started out—are you familiar with a distillery called MGP? MGP is a big distillery in Indiana, where a lot of folks still and would go and source their whiskey from. Like Angel’s Envy, Whistle Pig, George Dickel, Redemption, High West, they’ll go there, buy their whiskey, bring it back, blend it together, and create their own bottling with that. And they didn’t lie about it, but a lot of folks weren’t quite as transparent as they could be. So the name “Pinhook” is an old term for buying baby thoroughbred racehorses based on their lineage, raising the horses, and then selling the horses when they’re ready to run. And that’s essentially what we started out doing. We went down, bought some barrels—this was back when you could, you know, we got the barrels for like $460 each in 2011—started aging it, and then started releasing it. And we came to the conclusion that we were pinhooking bourbon. 

Like investing? 

Exactly, investing in the barrels of the future. And you know, when they bought the barrels, they didn’t have the name. There’s three founders, three buddies, and one of their best friends has a stable called “Bourbon Line Stables,” and all of his horses have either “bourbon” or “rye” in the name, which is kind of cool. So basically, each year we sit down with him and pick the horse that he thinks has the best chance to win the Derby. And bourbon and horse racing are both so true and connected in Kentucky—no one has ever really integrated horses into their brand, so we were kind of the first to do that. 

How do the horses do?

Uh, good. So Bourbon War, he was one win away from being in the Derby last year. 

…

At first, [our whiskey] was always 90-proof, because that’s what everyone else was doing. But at some point we started experimenting with it, and we realized that if you play around with the proof every time, you can come up with a more balanced, more complex whiskey, with a better finish and better alcohol integration. Like 95, 97, 104—I think as you taste these, they don’t taste that hot, you know?

So what’s the philosophy or method behind how you decide the proofing?

So, we’ll pull tons of little barrel samples and just proof it with different amounts of water, like to the half-proof. We’ve had whiskeys come in at 95.5, 93.5. Weirdly, the first time we saw this to be so true—we released our first rye a few years ago, at 93.5. The next rye we came to do came in at 97, and it felt softer at 97 than at 93.5, and that was just because of that particular batch of barrels. So, it’s just always going to be different, it’s always going to show differently. And sometimes it tastes better and more approachable—longer finish, more complex—at 98 proof than 96 proof. It’s crazy what one or two will do.

And it’s just a matter of tasting until you get the right ratio?

Exactly. [laughs] It’s a lot. But as opposed to trying to create this homogenized product that’s always the same, it’s always evolving. 

…

We do the flagship bourbon around the end of summer, so next July or August you’ll see a very similar bottling to this—same color of wax, same style of label, different horse, and slightly different flavor profile. 

And different whiskey? Are you trying to preserve some kind of identity or unifying traits?

Not flavor-wise. I mean, it’s the same mash bill, and it’s the same distillery, right, so there’s gonna be some similarities. But, like, this might show a little more fruit, and next time it’ll show a little bit more vanilla. But overall, you won’t see too drastic of changes. I think in wine vintages year to year you see some subtle changes, but the same producers kind of have a similar approach to each bottling.

On the subject of wine—you say you’re trying to approach making whiskey a little bit like making wine. In winemaking culture, you have the concept of terroir, the expression of a place. Do you have anything comparable, any guiding principle?

I couldn’t say it to the same extent as terroir. But just the fact that like, think about it: it takes one tree to make one oak barrel. No two trees are going to be the exact same thing. And each different oak barrel from each different tree is going to affect the whiskey inside differently every single time. And people like, for example—when Maker’s Mark bottles Maker’s Mark, they do a thousand barrel dumps at a time. They dump 800 barrels, and then based on how that tastes, they know which other 200 barrels they need to add to make it taste like Maker’s Mark. So that when you buy it, it’s the exact same: ten years ago, ten years from now. And we don’t ever care about doing that. We just want it to be the best whiskey, as opposed to the same whiskey. For example, to get on the tasting panel at Maker’s Mark, or probably any big bourbon brand, you line up 20 glasses—19 of them have Maker’s Mark in it, and one’s a little bit different. You have to be able to pick it out. But if that one is better, they can’t do anything with it—they just have to make it taste like Maker’s Mark. We don’t put ourselves in a box.

…

So, I’m sure you’re familiar a little bit with E.H. Taylor? 

A little bit, yeah.

Right, everybody is these days. So E.H. Taylor built his own distillery, the Old Taylor Distillery, in 1887. And when he built it, it was sort of the first bourbon tourist destination. No one took a lot of pride in their facility—you could still go to the supermarket and, like, fill your jug up right from the barrel. He wanted people to really come and embrace the process. And he did, and he had a great run. It was the first distillery to ever produce a million cases of bourbon. He built an actual castle for people to come and see this place. Natural ground water, spring water, right on site. It had a good run, but it was decommissioned in 1972. We were fortunate enough to know the two people, through some friends, who were buying it and bringing it back to life. It’s now called “Castle & Key,” same castle still lays there. So the first two whiskeys that we were able to release with our own distillate, it’s also the first whiskey coming out of this, one of the most iconic distilleries of all time, in almost 50 years. So it’s a big year for us.

Do you view yourselves as successors to that heritage?

I wouldn’t call it successors. On paper, the reality is, we have a contract with them. We’re just the first to do that, and as of now, the only to release. So if people want to try Old Taylor Distillery, now called Castle & Key, they’re drinking Pinhook. Castle & Key releases some of their whiskey, but as of now, it’s not making its way to the East Coast. So people who want to do so get to experience it through Pinhook. 

… 

Very exciting project that we started last year. So, as we were moving into the whiskey we were going to release out of Castle & Key, we still had some barrels that we’d previously sourced—great whiskey inside, we wanted to do something unique with it. So we came up with the idea of this Vertical Series. Basically, we’re going to take a small amount of those barrels every year, and do a release for the next nine years. Because they were all distilled roughly at the same time, within a month or so of each other, all in the same part of the brickhouse, so people can follow the same whiskey from the same set of barrels as it ages from four to twelve years old. People love to collect projects like this—our founder calls it the perfect storm of bourbon collecting. The age will go up, the proof will go up, demand will go up, but the production will go down. 

Do you have the kind of die-hard, obsessive following that’s going to get every year’s vintage?

We have a ton of folks like that. I think the six-year is going to be the big one, where it’s gonna be a little tougher to get. It’s 150 barrels, but that’s for the whole country, so there’s a good bit of it to get the word out there and spread it. Once it gets to six, seven years, the brand’s gonna be big and people are gonna know it, and people are gonna go back and start looking for the four- and five-year, but everybody drank it. This is on the shelf for 49 bucks, 50 bucks, people just buy it and drink it. And then they realize how collectible it is. So I tell anybody who’s going to work with the series, just buy it and hold like three bottles back. Sell it, because obviously we want people to be introduced to the story, and the collectability of it. But for y’all’s sake, hold two or three bottles back and just forget about them. And then in four or five years you can line them all up and see how it goes.

…

We do a limited bottling of each [vintage] at a higher proof. So it’s the same mash bill, the same age, this one’s just bottled at 114.5 proof.

Do you have a sense of how the flavor profile compares?

When we first started out, we were doing it all cask strength. But a huge part of what we do is that proofing process, where we look for the perfect proof every single time. So now we call it perfect high proof. 

For the slightly more alcoholic crowd.

Exactly, exactly. Anything cask strength or really high proof, I think you’re always going to get a bigger, bolder bourbon with more flavor profile. And then people can choose to water it down as they like. I think you get some sweeter notes because of the bolder flavors.

Do you have a favorite vintage that you’ve made?

Personally? The cask strength Rye Humor is probably one of my favorite things, and it’s been pretty highly regarded as one of our most popular releases.

So, out of curiosity, for someone who’s getting started learning about whiskey, what do they need to know about your product?

People are constantly looking for something different, and I think we offer that at a pretty good value, with great flavor profile. But when it comes to whiskey, it’s about finding what you like. When you look at whiskey, you look at this huge umbrella. People always ask me what’s the difference between bourbon and whiskey? Usually they mean scotch, but bourbon just falls under this umbrella. That is hands-down my favorite, because I stick to the American whiskey side. I think it usually comes across a little bit sweeter. I think that’s something we don’t always showcase. I think we’re able to avoid a lot of it. It’s too much vanilla, too much caramel, too much oak sometimes. But, you know, to each their own. Rye whiskey, personally, I think, holds up better in cocktails. 

Are you a cocktail guy?

I am, yeah. I came from the bar world a little while before this, and yeah, definitely made some cocktails. I definitely still like to do it at home. Usually I’ll have bourbon, neat, or maybe a little bit of ice. And rye whiskey I mix into cocktails.

I love a good old fashioned. 

It’s a good time. And that’s why you add a little bit of sugar. Traditionally, it is a bourbon cocktail, but…

As long as you’ve got the whiskey in there.

Exactly, exactly. 

How is it being back in New York?

It’s been great. Our founder owned two whiskey bars here in the city. One was called Maysville, on 26^th Street, along with CHAR No. 4, down in Carroll Gardens, in Brooklyn. So this is hands-down our biggest market. We have a great following here. It’s great to connect with some old Pinhook friends, and some regular friends as well. Happy to be here. You know, there’s worse things to do than pour whiskey for folks who are interested in drinking and hearing about it.

Not a bad gig if you can get it.

And it’s good whiskey, with a good story to tell. 

Burgundy’s distinctive wine culture dates back to the Middle Ages when Cistercian and Benedictine monks worked tirelessly to shape the vineyards of the Côte de Nuits and the Côte de Beaune. Realizing the potential to differentiate each small plot of land according to its unique geographic and weather characteristics, they carefully classified the area into what are now known as climats. Needless to say, it took hundreds of years of rigorous trial and error to figure out what each tiny vineyard plot was capable of producing.

Today, thanks to the monks' and successive generations' hard work, Burgundy’s terroir is defined by its 1,247 individual climats that are clearly identified by stone walls, hedgerows, fences and paths. In 2015, the climats were honored as a UNESCO World Heritage Site for being “a unique and living conservatory of centuries-old traditions, an expression of the diversity of its terroirs and producer of wines.” (unesco.org)

Domaines Albert Bichot is a Beaune-based winery made up of six estates that include several of these unique climats, from Chablis in the north to Beaujolais in the south. Founded in 1831, the winery prides itself on having remained family-owned and operated. It was the third generation, led by the visionary Albert Bichot, who began purchasing vineyards in the most sought-after locations of Burgundy. Today, each of the Maison’s six organically-farmed properties maintains its own winery and cellar where their wines are vinified and aged.

The winery is now run by Alberic Bichot, sixth generation winemaker who believes, as the monks did before him, that the richness and treasure of Burgundy is what lies underneath their feet. “The style of our wines,” he says, “is where they come from. Our duty and our passion is to try and reveal in each glass of wine the typicity of the soil.”

In early March, I connected by Zoom with Matthieu Mangenot, assistant technical director, to learn more about this distinguished winery. Mangenot has been with the winery since 2007 and his dual training as agronomist and oenologist gives him a 360-degree view of winemaking, from vineyard management to bottling.

Lisa Denning: Can you tell me a little bit about your background and how you ended up at Maison Albert Bichot?
Matthieu Mangenot: I've always been interested in working outside, and I knew quite quickly it would be with something connected with agriculture. I didn't know if it would be forest work or with animals, cattle or something like that. At the end of my studies, when I was 18, I'd went to South Africa for a training period at a wine farm for two months. I used to drink wine and enjoyed it, but not that much and it was like a light started in my head, and I said, "Whoa. That's what I like." Spending time in the vineyard, in the cellars, speaking with the people, discovering the different kind of wine varieties. It was a great discovery.

Then I came back to France and finished my studies, another five years in winemaking and agronomy. I worked for eight years in the Beaujolais area and then I was hired by Bichot in 2007 to oversee all the Chablis operations, which means Domaine Long-Depaquit. Alberic Bichot asked me to come back to Beaune three years ago. So I moved from Chablis to Beaune as assistant technical director for the entire group.

In France, when someone is the technical director, that means winemaker, correct?
Yes, it is. Your job is from the fruit of wine. So from the estates themselves down to the bottle and the finished wine. In between, of course, you have all the winemaking, also all the contracts, all the links with the people that are working with you and supply grapes, and also all the purchasing and all the teams that make the wine, bottle them, and take care of the wine generally speaking.

Sounds like you're very busy!
Yes, but it's very nice job.

Can you tell me a little bit about the history of Maison Albert Bichot?
Albert Bichot is based in the center of Beaune. The family started the business in 1831, so it's been quite a long time now. The company is still 100% family-owned and family-run. Alberic Bichot is our president. He is about 55 years old, and he’s the sixth generation in charge of the company. Bichot is very proud to still be there, not having been sold to a big company, and still expanding. We're still Bichot, one of the last companies in Beaune to still have this kind of organization.

Bichot is a bit more than 100 hectares of vineyards and we are running six estates in the North of Burgundy, Chablis, with the biggest being Domaine Long-Depaquit, 65 hectares, and then we have five other estates, two in Cote de Nuits: Domaine du Clos-Frantin, and Domaine du Chateau-Gris, which are located just next to each other in Nuit-Saint-Georges, and another estate in Pommard, Domaine du Pavillon. We have another one located in Mercurey, Domaine Adelie. And the last one to have integrated into Bichot is Domaine de Rochegres in Moulin-à-Vent in the Beaujolais area.

We are really connected to taking care of the grapes. We've got teams on all of the estates. And of course, we have all the questions we have to ask ourselves when you are a wine grower. Besides that, we also purchase some grapes and must, or just-pressed juice for the whites to vinify some other volumes besides the estates. The organization could be qualified as strange, since on every côte we've got a winemaker that is going to take care of that côte. And from the estates, for example at Long-Depaquit, the winemaker takes care of Long-Depaquit but also some purchased must or grapes coming from the area. That’s the same at, for example, Domaine du Clos-Frantin the winemaker vinifies all the vineyards from Domaine du Clos-Frantin itself but will also vinify grapes that we purchase in Cote de Nuits. Same thing in Pommard.

This allows us, of course, to expand what we can sell besides our Domaine but also the same people take care of grapes from estates and the fruit that we buy from outside so we can keep Bichot's style and typicity. It's not very common here. Most of the people with big wineries, have one place where they vinify everything. But we think it's different to make a Chablis than to make a Meursault, and staying where the grapes are grown allows the winemaker to really focus on the techniques that are supposed to be used locally, et cetera. It's a real key thing for the family. It's been a lot of time, quite a lot of money as well, to build the wineries, expand the cellars, buy tanks, and organize everything.  At the end, we group everything for the aging. In terms of logistics, it's a bit more complicated, but in terms of terroir and expression of terroir, we think it's a key thing for the wine we produce.

What's the philosophy of winemaking at Maison Albert Bichot?
One thing I didn't say is we are running organic, so all the estates we own are organic. The grapes we buy from outside could be organic, but all are not. But all the Bichot holdings have been organic for more than a decade, and Long-Depaquit is on its way to being certified organic. And that's part of what we want and the house style, what Bichot is. We are a specialist of Burgundy, for sure. We are located in the center of Burgundy, and we focus on the different côtes, from Chablis down to the Mâconnais and Beaujolais.

Our goal is really to promote the different terroirs and to be able to show the little differences we have in the different climats. This means a lot of precision, a lot of decision to be able to reveal the different aspects of the terroir. So it's really, I would say, a classic Burgundy way of doing things. With the various estates that we own, we must be sure that all of them show what they represent in terms of their different terroirs. So, of course, it's a lot of decisions in the vineyards themselves and also the days of picking to be able to reveal the different places.

The house style and what we are trying to do is also about adjusting the level of oak, the age of the oak and the type of oak. We mostly use very light toast to avoid any vanilla character which is a key thing in the general process of the winemaking of Bichot, and that’s to preserve the climat. If it’s too oaky, you’re going to flatten all the different characteristics and so that’s why there’s a lot of work on wood selection, as well as the length of time in the oak and also the size of the different oak to reveal the different places.

Can you explain the term climat and what that means in terms of the Burgundy vineyards.
Yeah. It's a typical Burgundian thing. Climat is a very single plot. There are a lot of them in Burgundy. If you compare it to Bordeaux, where they sell an estate and brand the wine according to the name of an estate, that's not the case for us. We're focus more on the place the grapes are produced. This means a very single plot that could be characterized by, of course, its location on the côte, for example. It could be at the bottom or in the middle of the côte, or at the top section. This will give a very specific characteristic to the soil. So the soil is going to differ. The way that water has been staying on the plot itself is going to be affected by that. Of course, it gives different sun exposure. So it could be a south or east or west. And of course, very, very specific would be the amount of rainfall on each, and the temperature because of shadows or flows of wind that's going to create a kind of microclimate on the place itself.

If you look at the map, there are, in Burgundy, more than 1000 different climats, very specific spots where everything combined, the things I mentioned, will give very specific characteristic to the grapes themselves. That's what we promote and what we are doing in Burgundy, generally speaking. And UNESCO has recognized this organization of very small plots, usually surrounded by walls, as a heritage site because of its very specificity. That's really the base of the Burgundy appellation. So you've got each appellation and inside, you've got the very little climats.

Tell me a little bit about the terroir of your different estates. What sets them apart from each other?
For all the estates of Burgundy, except Beaujolais, I would say, it's clay and limestone. It's a mix of clay and limestone, with something quite different in Chablis because you also have in the soil some Kimmeridgian stones in the soil which are very little oysters mixed with the clay and limestone to produce the specific soil of Chablis. So the soils are a bit more white in color with a more stony character. It's very easy to grab some pieces of the kimmeridgian stones, and you can clearly see the little oysters showing and appearing everywhere in Chablis. In this place, the Chardonnay will live on the little oysters, and with the generally cooler weather because Chablis is more north, this creates wine with more tension, more acidity, and more the freshness than something that you could find in the Maconnais.

And when you head south, for example in Nuit-Saint-Georges to Domaine du Clos-Frantin and Domaine du Chateau-Gris, we are still on clay and limestone, but without Kimmeridgian stones, of course. It's a combination of, in that case, more red marls and quite a lot of iron, it’s more reddish soil, red marls, and that’s very, very nice for Pinot Noir. It's not a very heavy soil; it's a combination of stones but also clay and limestone that could produce the ability to give very, very light and very refined Pinot Noir.

If you compare the soils to Pommard, you're going to have a bit more clay and white clay in this section, especially when you go south of Pommard and you head up to Meursault, you're having more clay. The soils are not as red as they are in Cote de Nuit, and you tend to be able to plant some white variety. Of course, it is Chardonnay in Meursault. The clay is a white clay. It’s very nice for Chardonnay, creating the top class wine we know, with quite a lot of structure, a lot of firmness, a lot of density. In Maconnais it's more clay also with quite a lot of limestone, more rocks. And of course, Beaujolais is totally different, as you are more on acidic, granitic soils.

Have you noticed over the past couple of decades changes in weather patterns that have been affecting the way your winemaking is conducted?
Yes, of course, and in a way, it's quite frightening. I started working here 20 years ago and I can see the difference between just something very simple, the date of harvest, which has changed quite a lot. And the elderly people can tell you that they used to usually harvest at the beginning of October, for us that's no more the case. Most of the time, it's mid-September. We even had a few times in August the last few years. So for sure, global warming is something that we can see and touch in the vineyards, especially as we write down everything that happens in the vineyard. So we have a lot of figures and we see the evolution.

Photo: Harvesting the Chardonnay in Chablis

How has it affected the style of your wines?
In my opinion, it's still something that help us. If you look back 20 or 30 years ago, in some vintages you were struggling to get a nice maturity, not to have excessive acidity. The global warming has really helped Burgundy achieve complete maturity in terms of fruitiness, and to avoid the green character we could have.

So right now it's really a positive thing, but we must be ready for the next step. In some cases, we see lower levels of acidity and you could see higher alcohol content. That's what we do right now to make the evolution in what we plant and the way we take care of the vineyards. And also in terms of winemaking, we want to be sure the Chardonnay still looks like Chardonnay and the Pinot Noir still has this very refined expression in Burgundy. It's a long process, but every year we adjust things and make a few improvements and try things. It has been the case for years and years, I would say, decades and decades, and we are still in this process to change and adjust.

How many different wines do you produce?
I think it's around 120 or 30. Again, because of the different climats, the different vineyards we are taking care of. For example, Chablis for Long-Depaquit itself, it's 13 different wines, and that's the case also for the other estates in Côte de Beaune and Cote de Nuit. And then you add of course what we purchase from outside. So yes, it's more than 120.

With so many different wines, how do you keep the quality and the consistency?
One of the key things, as I mentioned, is to have people dedicated to the different côtes. So approaching the grapes from Côte de Nuits, even if the winemaker is going to take care of 25 or 30 different wines from this area, he's got a specific approach from the grapes of Pinot Noir of Côte de Nuits. In Pommard, the winemaker also has a different approach. In terms of extraction, it's going to be maybe a bit softer in Côte de Nuits. The people in Pommard, they know they must be careful and not over-extract. And so that's how we deal with different wines we take care of.

Of course, sometimes it could be one or two barrels, so you can guess it's sometimes a very, very limited production because it's a very tiny plot. It gives something a bit more complicated to take care of. Clos Vougeot, where we do just a few barrels, it's sometimes frightening because they make high-value wines but in very, very limited quantities. So this organization, with people focused on their côte,to me, makes a difference in terms of overseeing the whole wide range of the appellation. And we've got  two people here in Beaune, one takes care of the white wines from the area and the other one from the village level appellation. So we base it on the teams that are dedicated to different sections.

Are the wines from each domaines aged on site, or do you have one big cellar for aging all of your wines?
It's both. It's both because the first year, this mean from harvest to the end of July, the wine stays on the different estates. We've got cellars at each place, but we need to have the cellar empty for the coming harvest. At the end of July, beginning of August, we empty the different estates, we roll the barrels. We don't pump at this stage, we do the release the old-fashioned way with trucks. So we load the barrels and all the barrels come to the center of Beaune, where we've got another big cellar, and the second-year aging is going to take place here in Beaune. You have to have the space available for the coming harvest on the estates. A this makes the wine closer to the bottling line because the bottling line is easier in Beaune. So again, in terms of logistics, it's a big thing.

I'd like to hear your thoughts on organics. Many people today are looking to purchase organic wines, just as they purchase organic foods. Is farming organically something a lot of wineries in Burgundy are doing? It doesn't seem as prevalent as in some other wine regions. Is that correct?
Yes, it's correct, you're right. It's expanding, but not as fast as other places. If you look in France, of course, the people from the south of France, in percentage, are much more organic than up north because of the northern rainy conditions and the cooler aspects. So, of course, there are different levels when you head from the South of France to Champagne.

In Burgundy right now it's a little bit less than 10% of the entire vineyard surface that is organic. I would say officially organic, because much more of this is run with organic practices but maybe not officially recognized. So it's still quite low if you compare. But there is quite a big trend if you look at the numbers of wineries that are entering the process in the last few years. It's really expanding right now. More and more people are converting and it's something that is really changing.

We started organic farming in 2000, so it's now more than 20 years, with the official recognition on the label in 2014. It's really a long process and there's always a risk in terms of losing part of your crop, and especially in Burgundy, people can be a bit frightened by it because the prices of the grapes are very high and the prices of the wines are very high. So sometimes it's difficult, but we see very big trends in terms even of taking care of the soils, of plowing. Most of the people, even if they are not organic, plow the soils, and they don't use herbicides anymore to take care of the soil. It's truly changing and really, really fast. So I think it's a good direction.

Can you tell me a little bit about the beautiful labels? While they are quite traditional, they have a certain modernity to them.
There’s a crown with the family’s coat of arms which has a deer—bichot means deer—and with three trees at the top with two greyhound dogs and the shape of the label is a kind of drawing they've had for 50 years now so it makes the bottles of Bichot very easy to recognize. You’ll find the same things on the different labels, only the color of the background changes to show the different wines. There is a project for new labels but they will keep the historical things, the shape, that really make the label stand out as Bichot.

Can you tell me about the 2018 and 2019 vintages?
Both were very warm vintages so we have had a series of really hot vintages. 2018, 2019, and 2020 are the warmest vintages of the decade. The last was 2003, the first vintage to have a lot of heat and in that case we also had a series of three warm vintages and so it could be similar to that in a way.

2018 was very warm but also very dry and despite that the yields were quite high in 2018 and quite nice levels of acidity which is a bit strange when the temperatures are very high, but it’s also the case in 2019 with strong winds at the end of August and beginning of September that caused the sugars and aromas to be concentrated. So even if those vintages are very warm, and if you look at the figures they’re in the same group, we still had the acidity in ‘18 and in ‘19. 2019 is much lower in terms of yields. We had quite a lot of rain at the flowering period, also a bit of frost at the beginning. 2019 will appear richer, with more density, much more generous, nearly creamy, but you will find acidity so it’s a very good balance.

For the price, Your Mâcon-Villages wine is amazing. People always think Burgundy is out of reach, but not this wine.
We must always remember that Burgundy is quite large, but not that large, and while people always have in mind the big appellations, the big names, Grand Cru,etc., it’s only 1% of the production. More than 50% of the production is regional or village appellation and Mâcon is really the place to go and we are re-exploring Macon. If you think of Mâcon-Reuilly and all the little villages that are here, they’ve got very specific characteristics of the climat and are great price-to-quality whites, very affordable, very easy to drink and very nice. So we are expanding in this region because we believe it can give very good Burgundy at very good prices.

What else do you enjoy drinking outside of Burgundy? Do you get inspiration from other wine regions?
We’ve got a problem in France, and it’s to find wine from other countries. The French are totally crazy, I hate that, and travelling in the US, I always want to buy wine. Here in France to find some foreign wines you really have to fight or browse the internet to find it.

Personally I like Loire wines. I have rediscovered this region that has worked so hard recently to replant and restore and change the way they were doing the wines. For example Borgeuil, they’ve got some really beautiful wines. Also Rhône, I like the big Saint Joseph and those kind of places with a lot of fruit and to knowing what work was done on the steep slopes. Also sometimes I travel to Italy or Spain to grab a few other wines. It’s difficult to get inspiration from these places as the wines are totally different but we like to see what’s going on in Germany as they do such beautiful white wines with purity and freshness so it’s inspiring.

Is there anything else you want to tell me about Maison Albert Bichot?
Being a family-owned company is something that’s very important here and it gives something a bit different from many other companies, because you're connected with the family also. Alberic’s father and uncles and other family members come to the winery and it makes a different atmosphere. Sometimes it slows the decision-making, but at the end, you know that the decision is going to be made very well and for the long distance. So it's a very interesting place to work and also to promote the different wines from the company. It's also the name of the family, so it gives something special to the wine.

I'm sure the family pride is something that's very important and which shines through in the wines.
Yes it is very important. We are not only a wine producer but also we are promoting the name of this family, which is dedicated to wine. It's interesting, and another thing linked with the family is what we do with Hospices de Beaune, the very long-term involvement of the family at the wine auction.

Bichot has a very long history with the Hospices de Beaune. We are now the first owner for many, many decades. This means that we get some customers that are going to buy through us at the Hospices de Beaune as a way to support the hospital and the City of Beaune through these auction sales. It's another involvement of the family. The first one is in the vineyards: running organic, taking care of the environment. The second one is to be involved in the city of Beaune itself, through this wine auction because the wines are really sold for the hospital and for the facilities and all the medical systems.