{"product_id":"blaufrankisch-hochegg-2021-weingut-schnabel","title":"Blaufrankisch Hochegg 2021 - Weingut Schnabel","description":"\u003cp\u003eFrom 20 year old Blaufrankisch vines in the Hochegg vineyard. The fruit was harvested and destemmed by hand. Fermentation on skins over six weeks in open wooden vats. Ageing in 228L oak casks for 18 months.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe dichotomy of expression between this site and the fruit from Koregg is quite remarkable. Here we have a verticality, a chiselled expression thats driven by the character of the siliceous soils. We find a salty freshness in the mouth that is threaded through the soft, elegant fruits of Blaufrankisch.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ch3\u003eThe producer\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003eI first tasted Karl and Eva's wines sitting at the bar of Neighbourhood Wine in North Melbourne in 2018. It was a bottle of Urgestein, a blend of red varieties from their three vineyards. I was struck, as anyone familiar with their work will understand, by the weightless power of the wine, despite its mineral density and ripe fruit. I reached out to their Australian importer, Campbell Burton, for their details, which he obligingly provided. Since then we've remained in touch, and I visited them at their stand at La Dive Bouteille on several occasions in the years that followed, through challenging lockdown years. Their philosophy of farming, and they see themselves as farmers above anything else, is as Karl describes it, puritanical, and I've always left their company with a deeper fascination with the remarkable wines of the Sausal. The Sausal Inselberg, or island mountain, is a geological formation older than the Alps, with ancient slate soils that produce wines unlike anything you will find elsewhere in Europe. It's no exaggeration to say that these wines were instrumental in my pursuit of a career in wine, and so it's a great pleasure to work with Karl and Eva to represent their wines here in Ireland.\u003cbr\u003eThe couple make their wines at the venerable farm known as Ermihof, Karl's old family holding in the hamlet of Maierhof, in the municipality of Gleinstätten, in Styria. Ermihof is the farm name, or Vulgoname, an old Styrian tradition by which the farm itself retains its name regardless of who owns it, in fact the owner would often have been known by the farm name rather than their surname. This was useful to identify who exactly one was gossiping about at the local inn at a time when many villagers would have shared the same first and last names. Karl and Eva live at the roadside inn that was run by Karl's mother. A popular drinking spot for the locals, it was where she met Karl's father, who was the farmer at Ermihof at the time. Their eventual marriage presented a happy commercial opportunity, and they began working together, selling the wines from the farm at the inn, where they became the local favourite.\u003cbr\u003eThe sudden death of Karl's parents when he was 17 closed the chapter on an intergenerational period of active operations at Ermihof, and it lay fallow for several years. Karl went to study agricultural economics at BOKU, while Eva read business administration at WU. Neither attended the illustrious wine schools of the German speaking world, Klosterneuburg, close to Vienna, or Geisenheim in the Rheingau. This would prove significant when they returned home to reactivate the farm in 1998. Before doing so, Karl spent two years working in Burgundy, though refuses to disclose where. Nevertheless, he brought the techniques of the region's red wine production back to Ermihof, and began replanting his three parcels with Blaufränkisch, Pinot Noir, Rotburger (Blauer Zweigelt) and Morillon (Chardonnay). The couple's sanity was questioned by their neighbours and friends, with the prosperity of the region's wine economy built on the success of highly technological white wines, particularly from Sauvignon Blanc.\u003cbr\u003eWith Karl's family having never used chemicals at Ermihof, the farm had always been organic, and so when they were certified by Demeter in 2003, it was ratifying a longstanding practice rather than a conversion. Keeping a small herd of rare breed, horned Celtic cattle, who provide the manure for the preparations they use, the couple's decisions were in pursuit of the closed circuit aspirations they had from the beginning. This was inspired by their vision of the farm as a single living organism, a holistic view that requires work that others would find painstakingly tedious.\u003cbr\u003eTheir wines began to be denied a Prüfnummer as they withdrew filtration and sulphur addition at the cellar, a process completed in 2007. The turbidity and breadth of expression was seen by the assessment panel as atypical and faulty. They made the decision to label their wines outside of the classification, losing the protected Ried designation for their three vineyards, and they have been sold as Landwein ever since. Karl stipulates that had they followed the usual path and attended Klosterneuburg or Geisenheim, their playbook could have been very different.\u003cbr\u003eParallel to these developments on the domestic front, the Schnabels began looking outward to the international market, joining S.A.I.N.S., a French collective who are committed to producing wines without manipulation through filtration or sulphur addition. Their wines became cult favourites among winemakers from both the conventional and radical traditions, and they developed a healthy international distribution network outside of the usual corridors of the day. The idea of world class reds coming from the Sausal seemed almost paradoxical in the context of the day, and so curiosity attracted collectors and importers from far and wide.\u003cbr\u003eThe region itself is an isolated massif that stands alone in the wider Südsteiermark. The massif was pushed higher when the Alps were forming, so there are no marine deposits or clays here, just the primary siliceous slate and schist with threads of quartz. The weathering of the rock over time means the soils are quite rocky and open, so they drain well and retain heat, useful with Styria being the wettest wine region in Austria and the elevation here of 500 to 520 metres above sea level.\u003cbr\u003eThe climate is Illyrian-Mediterranean. The Illyrian influence is humid air drawn up from the Adriatic sea and Balkan corridor, carrying most of the yearly rainfall of 900 to 1000mm or so. This precipitates significant fungal pressure for the vines, making the steep gradient, which is in some places 70%, particularly important, helping to drain standing water very quickly. The Sausal's exposure is also useful here, with steady airflow naturally reducing the risk enough that the Schnabels' treatments of minimal sulphur and kaolin, alongside their herbal tisanes, are robust enough to mitigate the conditions and protect the vines. The tisanes are brewed from nettle, horsetail and yarrow gathered in the vineyards themselves, in a thousand litre kettle. The meadows on the estate provide the plants for their biodynamic compost preparations, chamomile, nettle, yarrow, oak bark, dandelion and valerian, with the cattle providing the manure. They use a scythe to cut the grass beneath the vines, but allow the rows between to grow free.\u003cbr\u003eThe southerly exposition of these vineyards, and the heat retaining stony soils, facilitates a warm microclimate that helps ripening, despite the cold nights at this altitude. The Mediterranean influence is visible too, with wild thyme growing on the barren, rocky slopes, to the point that visitors often remark on the similarities. The sites are managed as biotopes, and Karl and Eva have also installed nesting sites and stone mounds that promote animal presence, with water carried up to the sites, which have no running water of their own. The conditions allow them to wait at harvest time, as picking at full ripeness is their preference, with everything brought in by hand.\u003cbr\u003eAt the cellar, the influence of Karl's time in Burgundy is apparent. The reds are destemmed and fermented spontaneously in open wooden vats, with pigeage by hand. They don't use must pumps at any stage. Usually the maceration lasts 10 to 14 days, and after pressing the wines age in used 228 litre Burgundian barrels for about 12 months. Nothing is added at any point, with no chaptalisation, fining, filtration or sulphur addition. They clean their bottles with spring water before bottling by hand and use natural cork of the highest grade as closures. The cellar is cleaned with hot water and nothing else.\u003cbr\u003eIn 2020, Gault Millau named them Ausnahmewinzer des Jahres, with their Blaufränkisch Koregg 2017 taking 18.5 out of 20, in the top 10 reds of Austria. Karl's own verdict on the honour was that it had been a long and stony road.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ch3\u003eThe place\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003eHochegg is the highest vineyard in the Schnabel estate, at 540 masl, sitting on an open shoulder of the Sausal massif, facing south-southwest. The soils are coarse, open siliceous schist, with the rusted-red hue of iron that's been exposed to the air for millions of years. The fruit profile is darker here, and we feel a more vertical structure than from the other Schnabel vineyards, Koregg and Kreuzegg. Here, the conditions demand much of the vines, and we feel this in the mineral thrust of the wine, and the gradient of 70% in places helping the fruit to reach full phenolic ripeness despite the conditions. The long grasses between the vines mean that snakes thrive here, Maintaining a natural balance of wildlife among the vines.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eGrapes:\u003c\/strong\u003e Blaufrankisch\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eRegion:\u003c\/strong\u003e Sausal, Sudsteiermark, Austria\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eABV:\u003c\/strong\u003e 12%\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Weingut Schnabel","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":54988706971986,"sku":"17002035","price":54.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1116\/0246\/7154\/files\/bw-blaufrankisch-hochegg-2021.jpg?v=1793699100","url":"https:\/\/www.brianswines.ie\/products\/blaufrankisch-hochegg-2021-weingut-schnabel","provider":"Brian's Wines","version":"1.0","type":"link"}