Thursday, December 4. 2008Kellerei Bozen Winery Tour
If you come into Bolzano by train from the North, one of the first things you see will be vine-covered hillsides surrounding the valley. South Tyrol (the valley) is an ancient wine-growing region, special for its large variety of slopes, soils and altitudes for growing wine grapes. Many of these vines belong to Kellerei Bozen, or at least to the grower cooperative which supplies their grapes. This winery has two labels: St. Magdalener and Greis.
One of the tremendous joys of world travel for a wino like me is the ability to discover obscure but delicious local wines. Greis is one such. In Bolzano, Greis wines are served in every fine restaurant, and they are popular all over Southern Germany. Yet few cases get shipped more than 200km. So you'll just have to take my word for how good they are. Patrick of the South Tyrol Open Source Center was good enough to book us on a winery tour.
After harvest, the first step in making wine is to separate the stems and leaves, and to crush the grapes. I was interested to see that this "old world" winemaker was every bit as modern and technological as leading California vintners.  The crushed grapes, and the waste are sucked into different tanks using siphon tubes. The wastes are sold to make Grappa.
The premium wine grapes go into 1000-liter steel tanks. It takes about 1.5 hectares of grapes to fill one of these. There the wine goes through primary fermentation.  Cheaper wines are fermented in concrete tanks.
From the tanks, the wine is pumped into casks in the cellar to age and undergo secondary (lactic) fermentation. These casks are French or Tennessee oak. There, the wine ages from 8 to 24 months.  These old black oak casks, engraved with the image of the company owner in 1960, are no longer used.
The fine wines end up in sealed cases, and the cheap wines in large screw-top bottles. Next post: Tastings! |
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Me and my fellow geeks enjoyed tasting all of the Greis wines. The Greis staff brought out eight wines for us to taste. Since South Tyrol offers such a large variety of terrain for wines, Greis is able to produce a very broad variety of wines, from
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