Gewurz Has the Buzz in Italian White Wines

“Autochton! Autochton! Autochton!” Martin Foradori called out with rhythmical emphasis from behind the wheel of his car. Drum and bass music boomed from the speakers of his car audio as we shot along the autostrada.

Dressed head to foot in Dolce & Gabbana with gelled short black hair, the tall, slender Foradori could pass for a successful dance music producer. Instead, he is the director of the Josef Hofstatter wine estate in this town in the Alto Adige, Italy’s Alpine far north.

His words were a battle cry. “Autochton” means indigenous, and the indigenous white wine grape of Alto Adige is Gewurztraminer, which takes its name from Termeno (Tramin, in German).

The world is currently in the grip of a red wine boom, and on top of that, few white varietals are less fashionable around the globe than Gewurztraminer. Nevertheless, in the Alto Adige, no other varietal is causing such a buzz.

“It started five years ago when our customers suddenly began asking for dry Gewurztraminer,” Foradori explained. “Before that, it was a hard sell. Now we cannot produce enough.”

Walk into a classy restaurant in Italy today and you are likely to see bottles of Alto Adige Gewurztraminer on many tables. Elsewhere wine drinkers still think of Gewurz as a sweet, heavy, perfumed white, but the Italians are making it elegant enough to drink with fish.

What makes the new Alto Adige Gewurztraminers different from others is their freshness and delicate aromas; rose blossoms are the dominant character. And in spite of having between 13% and 14.5% alcohol, they taste clean, crisp and dry.

Located between the Alps and the Dolomites, the vineyards of this Northern Italian province cling to the sides of the hills overlooking the Adige river. The flat valley floor is filled with apple orchards, and snow-dusted mountain peaks soar overhead.

Hofstatter’s 2000 “Kolbenhof” has an enticing bouquet of roses and honeysuckle and is rich and silky with a long, fresh aftertaste. The 1998 vintage shows that a modest amount of age makes these wines even more elegant, the rose aromas having blossomed in the bottle.

They are a world away from the oaky Chardonnays and Cabernet Sauvignons with which Alto Adige first attracted the attention of non-Italian wine enthusiasts 15 years ago. Foradori thinks the region needs to regard these international varietals with more skepticism: “The problem is that there are only a few micro-zones in Alto Adige where they regularly give exciting results.”

Nobody has done better with Chardonnay here than Colterenzio, a cooperative winery in Cornaiano. Still, winery director Luis Raifer says the Gewurztraminer sells out even more quickly. The “Cornell” Gewurztraminer is a bold dry white with pronounced smoked bacon and citrus aromas.

The Alto Adige wine producer best known outside Italy is Alois Lageder of Magre. He calls the early experiments with Chardonnay and Cabernet necessary “to convince the world of our region’s potential,” but Gewurztraminer is the big success now. Lageder’s regular 2000 bottling is one of the crispest and most delicate of the new wines.

Elsewhere in the wine-growing world, the trend is toward super-premium wines with massive body and powerful flavors, but here many vintners are obsessed with the search for the ultimate in delicacy. Pushing the envelope in Alto Adige means planting vineyards at ever higher altitudes. The higher you go, the cooler the air; this lengthens the ripening season, leading to more subtle flavors, though it also increases the risk that the grapes won’t ripen fully.

During the late 1980s and early 1990s, Peter Pliger of Bressanone in the Valle Isarco planted his vines between 1,600 and 2,000 feet above sea level. His 2000 Gewurztraminer has an aroma of apple blossoms with the freshness and clarity of a mountain stream.

“When we started with this kind of wine we wondered if people would want to drink them, because they were so different from what was fashionable at the time,” Pliger says, “but now [they’re in such demand] we have to allocate everything.”

No Alto Adige vintner explores the potential of mountain vineyards more daringly than Franz Haas of Montagna. He has planted vineyards as high as 2,600 feet above sea level in the search for new flavors and elegance.

“The problem of the low-altitude vineyards is not only the air, but also the haze down in the valley on hot days, which blots out the sunlight,” Haas says. “Great wines grow where the vines get intense sunlight the whole day long.”

In Haas’ 2000 Gewurztraminer, the rose and fresh pineapple character, generous alcohol and fresh acidity are precisely balanced. Unlike the great majority of Alto Adige whites, it should continue to improve for several years in the bottle.

Even his 2000 Pinot Bianco, from a varietal widely cultivated in Northern Italy, where it usually gives anonymous soft whites, shows the benefit of high-altitude vineyards. It has a striking smoky and honeyed character with an unusual velvety finish.

Like the other new dry whites from Alto Adige, it ignores all the important international wine trends. Here, innovation is the result of the vintners reaching for the sky and finding their own way.