Godforsaken Grapes by Jason Wilson

Author:Jason Wilson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Abrams
Published: 2018-04-28T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

Blue Frank and Dr. Zweigelt

“I doubt, therefore I am,” said Roland Velich, winemaker at Moric winery. “It’s good to doubt things or else there is no movement.” Velich and I were tasting his blaufränkisch wines, but not in a typical tasting room. Rather, we sat in his mod, softly lit, blanc-and-noir study, essentially an intellectual’s man cave. I sat on an expensive black leather couch while the Goldberg Variations played softly in the background, and Velich stroked the back of his beautiful nine-year-old caramel-colored dog, a Vizsla (or Hungarian pointer) that sat serenely at his feet on the white shag rug. As he poured each Moric blaufränkisch, each from a different vineyard in Mittelburgenland, each one of the finest expressions of the grape, he lined the bottles on his mantle: the intense Reserve, full of dark, brooding spice; the big, deeply earthy Lutzmannsburg, from 100-year-old vines, like picking berries in an ancient forest after a heavy rain; the decadent, ever-unfolding Neckenmarkt, from primary rock at over 1,000 feet altitude, supple and bright, with a long finish like delicate red fruits and cocoa sipped from a smooth bowl made of rare, exotic wood. Tasting these complex wines in Velich’s man cave, I imagined myself a character in a sensuously philosophical European novel, say Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

While we tasted, we discussed old Robert Parker and his unhinged rant against “godforsaken grapes.” Moric wines have always received very high scores from Parker’s Wine Advocate, so it perplexed Velich that blaufränkisch had been singled out on the blacklist. He expressed skepticism over the certainty and entrenched opinions that shape so much discussion about wine from critics and sommeliers and collectors. “Doubting is the beginning of intellect,” he said.

As the bottles lined up on the mantel, I certainly doubted Parker and his ranting assertion that blaufränkisch was a grape that “in hundreds of years of viticulture, wine consumption, etc.” has “never gotten traction” because it has been “rarely of interest.” This notion is simply false. The grape name blaufränkisch—literally “blue Frankish”—dates to the Middle Ages, when Charlemagne was King of the Franks and Holy Roman Emperor, ruling Europe in the eighth century from what is now Aachen, Germany. Fränkisch was a term of quality, differentiating it from things that were Heunisch (“from the Huns”), a pejorative describing anything from the eastern Slavic lands. Later, in the 12th century, Hildegard of Bingen, the German nun and mystic, wrote that wines such as blaufränkisch were stronger than Heunisch wines and had an effect on the motion of the blood. All of which means that blaufränkisch was considered a “noble grape” by a powerful monarchy much earlier than either pinot noir or cabernet sauvignon in Burgundy or Bordeaux. So either Robert Parker doesn’t know his wine history (not very likely) or he’s clinging to some 20th-century narrative about wine that isn’t true anymore.

Velich’s home and winery sit behind a modest church in the village of Großhöflein, in Mittelburgenland, 15 minutes from the Hungarian border.

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