Blaufränkisch 2004, Gernot Heinrich
16th February 2008
The story of modern Austrian wine begins with a chemistry lesson. Diethylene glycol is a clear odourless liquid which will mix with water, alcohol or ether. You can use it as a disinfectant or as antifreeze in your car. You can sweeten food with it too, but you shouldn’t, because diethylene glycol is also a poison. It kills by causing kidney failure.
Austrian wines, like German wines, used to be classed according to their sweetness. But Austria’s climate and terrain are less suited than Germany’s to making sweet wine. So at some point in the late 1970s a few Austrian producers began to cheat. They added small amounts of diethylene glycol to their wine to make it taste sweeter and richer. In the end, inevitably, they were caught. The Great Antifreeze Scandal of 1985 wiped out Austria’s wine exports. For a while it threatened the whole industry. In the event, it saved it.
The Austrian government had no choice but to impose tough new regulations. Austrian growers were forced to think hard about what they made and how they made it. Instead of producing large amounts of cheap, sweet wine, they began to make lower-volume wines that were drier and of better quality.
They also had to reconsider which grapes best suited their conditions. For white wine they turned to the Grüner Veltliner grape and to Sauvignon Blanc. For red, they rediscovered their local varietals, Blaufränkisch, Zweigelt and Sankt Laurent. Some even turned to Pinot Noir.
This example of Blaufränkisch comes from Gols in Burgenland, south-east of Vienna. Its producers, Gernot Heinrich, epitomise the rebirth of the Austrian industry. They have been going since the early 1990s, and they make wines in the modern style, fermenting them in stainless steel and aging them wholly or partly in barrique.
The result here is a dense, bluish-purple wine scented of allspice and herbs and offering a pleasing spectrum of ripe, fleshy tastes. It shows expertise rather than panache, but that is no great crime, and at $19 US, £13 UK, it is fair value. On the strength of it I shall be keeping an eye out for other Heinrich wines.
