A noble art
From Willi Opitz(T&W Wines,01842 765646)
lPinot Gris TBA 1995 (£25)
lMuskat Ottonel Schilfmandl 1994 (£33.90)
lOpitz One 1995(£32.50)
From Alois Kracher (Justerini & Brooks 0171-493 8721)
lScheurebe TBA 1996 No. 3 (£16.60)
lMuskat Ottonel TBA 1996 No. 6 (£18.30)
From Feiler-Artinger(Lay & Wheeler,01206 764446)
lRuster Ausbruch 1995 (£9.89)
lPinot Cuvée Ausbruch 1995 (POA)
Illmitz is famous for its storks - and its dessert wines - and for the astonishing fact that it has 38 restaurants for a population of 2,200. The Austrian town lies on the eastern shore of Neusiedlersee, a hop, skip and a jump from the Hungarian border, in an eastern Austrian region called Burgenland.
While the Viennese may snort at the impenetrable local dialect (the area was part of Hungary until 1921), they readily quaff the region's wines, which range from sweet, luscious Scheurebe to elegant Blauburgunders.
But it hasn't always been so. Until the mid-1980s, the majority of wines in Austria paid lip service to the (mostly German) tourists who lapped up the cloyingly sweet sp„tlese before staggering back across the border. Then something happened that would change things forever. A few unscrupulous negociants added a dollop of diethylene glycol to some wines - an apparently harmless but illegal additive to boost body and sweetness. They were found out and prison sentences were duly distributed, but the damage was done.
Exports took a dive. Many smaller growers, unfairly tainted by the scandal, found it impossible to sell their wines, and some old-timers gave up altogether. But they were replaced by young blood, determined to make good again - this time with new-style wines.
Mind-blowing
The new, dry whites, made from Riesling and Grner Veltliner, rival the whites of Alsace and Burgundy. The reds, made from varieties such as Zweigelt and Blaufr„nkisch, offer something out of the ordinary. And then there are pudding wines to blow your mind. Sweet wines are restricted to the nobly sweet: Auslese, Beerenauslese, Ausbruch, Trockenbeerenauslese (TBA) and Eiswein.
Some would even argue that the scandal was the best thing ever to have happened to Austrian wine.
The Neusiedlersee is regarded as the sweet wine area though, of course, other Austrian wine regions have the capacity, when the climate conspires. The area is also capable of some admirable dry reds and whites, which, for the sweet wine producer, keep the books balanced and food on the table when the climate doesn't do its thing, and the starlings make off with the best grapes. But more about its dry wines in a later feature.
Nowhere makes noble sweet wines quite like the Burgenlanders. Top names include Alois Kracher, Helmut Lang, Umathum, and Willi Opitz, on the eastern shores of the lake. The west side, called the Neusiedlersee-Hgelland, is home to the likes of Feiler-Artinger and their famous Ruster Ausbruch - the sweet wine category that sits between Beerenauslese and Trockenbeerenauslese, with a minimum of 27 Klosterneuberger Mostwagge (KMW), made exclusively from overripe grapes shrivelled by noble rot.
The lake's peculiar climate ensures that the vineyards closest to its shores suffer the liquid gold-giving rot. The humid mists rising off the water see to that, and in most years, producers can count on getting enough botrytis to keep the bank happy.
Bouvier is the easiest grape to "rot", as it's the first to start shrivelling. Traminer is the most difficult, because of its thick skin. Soils are mixed - there's loess, black soil, gravel and sand. And while it's warmer here than in the rest of Austria, hitting 40ºC in July and August, with a growing season that continues late into the autumn, in the winter months the lake freezes over - much to the excitement of locals, who carve it up with their ice-skates.
On a foggy morning, the flat, reed-fringed lakedoesn't score many points on the scenic scale. "But it should really be seen at sunset," says Willi Opitz.
Until recently Opitz was Austria's most famous wine-maker - outside the country, that is. "I came to England 22 times last year," boasts the genial 40-something, who organised the production of cat food up until three years ago. The ex-mechanical engineer from Mars promotes his dessert wines with great success. "Who would have thought an Austrian wine-maker would get an invitation to the White House?" he laughs.
Every time Opitz goes through US customs, he risks a flogging - he never travels anywhere without a galia melon and a wedge of Castel Blue in his briefcase. A nibble of either shows his wines at their best, he says.
His wines have a cult following in America, and in the UK especially, commanding high prices. Marco's Mayfair restaurant Mirabelle lists his sweet red, Opitz One 1995 (his typically humourous spin on Opus One, the Rothschild/Mondavi Napa collaboration) for £113 for a 37.5cl bottle, and his 1995 Bouvier Trockenbeerenauslese at £100. "Both are selling well," he grins.
Opitz is always working on something new. Right now it's a Schilfwein, which he calls Schilfmandl, a wine that revives the old tradition of drying the grapes on the lake reeds, from harvest to February, prompting Austria to rewrite its wine laws. Best is the version made with Muskat Ottonel, though he's playing around with a Schilfwein made from Blauburgunder.
He's loyal to Austrian varieties. "I don't ever try to be like Sauternes," says Opitz. "The competitive edge to our wine is that it must always be unique. I don't want to grow Semillon or Sauvignon, but Scheurebe and Muskat-Ottonel. No one else is doing this. I can only survive with niche products."
He remembers how it all started. "In 1976, I made a Blaufr„nkisch Beerenauslese just to do something different. I showed it in a local competition and won a gold medal. We didn't even really know about botrytis back then; we just saw that the grapes were shrivilled and thought: let's pick. As a boy, I remember rejecting the "sick" grapes when we delivered our half hectare of fresh grapes to the co-op. We certainly didn't read books about it."
Opitz and his family gradually turned their hectares of sugar beet into vineyards. Now he makes 40,000 bottles from 10 hectares of his own vineyards, producing around 30 different wines each year, from 12 different grape varieties. His favourite is a Scheurebe TBA, and he has a soft spot for his Schilfmandl made from Grner Veltliner. He pats a framed certificate from Wine magazine, naming him 1996/97 Late Harvest Winemaker of the Year, an accolade he is extremely proud of.
Willi Kracher was among the first generation to make quality sweet wine here. His son, Alois, has continued that reputation and he's now regarded as one of the best dessert wine-makers in Austria. The collectors love him. It helps that Kracher codes his wine by numbers, which ascend in order of concentration and price. His 1996, for example, ranges from one to nine. In 1995, there were 15 wines in all - it was a good year. "They like to have the complete set," he says.
Everything went right with the vintage last year. "An average yield" says the blurb from the Austrian Wine Commission. This is music to producers' ears, as it follows three relatively small vintages. There was little frost damage, good fruit development and a drying out patch after a rainy start in September. There was more botrytis than 1997, and the sweet wines promise to be of a similar calibre to the excellent sweet wine vintages of vintages of '89, '91 and '95.
Whereas for Opitz, the UK is his most important market, for Kracher it's home. "I'm a big dog here," he smirks. Kracher is another fan of indigenous grapes, "especially Zweigelt, because it's unusual". But he does use Chardonnay to explosive effect on its own (as in No. 8 in the 1996s), and as a fattening agent for the more acid Welschriesling.
His new winery has just been finished. He plans to expand the dessert wines over the next few years. "My next investment is a very good wine-maker - I need someone else to help me make them!"
On the other side of the lake, the town of Rust wears its affluence with pride. The carefully-kept streets are dominated by the sweet wine that has made fortunes for its citizens. In 1681, Rust was made an Imperial free city, as a tribute to the fame of its wines - Ausbruch in particular. It was already sought after by the Northern European royal courts, and by the 1830s was known as far away as Pennsylvania. After a serious bout of phylloxera, the wines became virtually extinct for the best part of a century, but were revived in the late 1980s.
The Feiler family has a highly rated 20-hectare estate. Their traditional Ruster Ausbruch is a blend of Welschriesling and Pinot Blanc, to which in good years they might add a single-variety Ausbruch, such as Traminer. Since 1988 the Feilers have taken to maturing Ausbruch in oak, which adds a dollop of cream to already luscious fruit. They produce 30,000 bottles in all, though this includes their superb reds. The top wine is Solitaire, which in 1997 was a blend of Blaufr„nkisch, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot. But before you reach for the phone, it's all allocated.
Kracher, too, is working on a serious dry red. "But I need more time to learn about these wines. Whatever I do, I don't want to distract from my dessert wines. It maynot be chic to be a sweet-wine maker, but I am what I am." n
