Carnuntum

 

The vineyard of Rosenberg was almost silent when I visited at the end of July. I could hear cicadas croaking and the soughing of the wind, but that was about it. Rows of vines stretched down the gentle green slope towards the small town of Göttlesbrunn, beyond which the ground rose again towards a windfarm. Stones and pebbles lay on the soil beneath the vines, but the ground between the rows was covered in grass.

        Sleepy Göttlesbrunn is in the heart of the small Austrian vine-growing region of Carnuntum, a short drive to the east of Vienna Airport. The wind blows three hundred days a year, lowering disease pressure to such a degree that the majority of production is organic. 

On the day I arrived, the temperature hit thirty-three degrees. The heat is, however, mitigated by forests and the River Danube, which flows unseen just a few miles to the north. ‘The Danube gives us cool nights’, according to Johanna Markowitsch of Weingut Markowitsch.

 

Göttlesbrunn

This being Austria, it should come as no surprise that a lot of very good white wines are made in Carnuntum. The Grüner Veltliners I tried were fuller-bodied than those from famous regions further west like the Wachau, with a lovely rich mouthfeel from long lees ageing or barrel fermentation. ‘We believe in working a lot with the lees’, said Hanna Glatzer of Weingut Glatzer, another producer in Göttlesbrunn.

 

Wines made from Grüner Veltliner can be labelled 'Carnuntum DAC', a designation which is used for regionally typical wines. Wines made from four other grape varieties – Weissburgunder (Pinot Blanc), Chardonnay, Zweigelt and Blaufränkisch- may also be labelled this way. Blends, known as 'cuvées' here, qualify as Carnuntum DAC wines as long as two thirds of the blend comes from the grapes mentioned above. 

 

Chardonnay is a favourite at Weingut Markowitsch. Johanna Markowitsch commented that Chardonnay ‘can deal with the sun but also loves the cool nights’ in Carnuntum. She drove me to Ried Schüttenberg, a vineyard whose high limestone content suits the grape. It abuts the Maria Ellender Wald, a large forest north of the vineyards in Göttlesbrunn, which has a cooling effect.

 

Bunches of grapes on the vines in Schüttenberg were shrouded by black nets as a protection against wild boar and deer. I saw these nets elsewhere in Austria, where the main concern was hail. Markowitsch’s Ried Schüttenberg Chardonnay 2023, a ‘riedenwein’ (single vineyard wine), was mouth-filling with a touch of new oak. ‘The idea of all our whites is that they have power but also good acidity’, Johanna Markowitsch told me.

 

        Carnuntum is more renowned for its red wines, though. In the vineyard of Rosenberg I saw tiny Merlot berries growing on the vine. They were green, having not yet gone through véraison. Merlot apparently grows well on sand and gravel soils in Carnuntum, but Hanna Glatzer deemed it ‘challenging’ because its sugar content shoots up before the seeds are ripe.

 

        The most planted red grape in Carnuntum, and indeed Austria, is Zweigelt. In the vineyard of Rosenberg, it’s grown on clay, which is rare in Carnuntum. I was informed, however, that it can grow successfully just about anywhere, explaining its ubiquity. Although widely planted, Zweigelt 'doesn’t have the best reputation’, in the words of Benjamin Edthofer of Weingut Wieninger in Vienna, who said that it ‘can be tricky as a single varietal wine’.

 

Zweigelt ‘has many faces’, according to Johanna Markowitsch, but the wines tend to be full-bodied and always have a dark fruit character, with cherry a common flavour. The dark cherry note was also mentioned by Hanna Glatzer, who observed that Zweigelt has more ‘charming’ tannins than the other leading red grape in Carnuntum, Blaufränkisch.

 

        Hanna Glatzer had many interesting things to say about red wines. She observed that Blaufränkisch has blackberry, earthy and spicy notes in Carnuntum, with a tannin structure similar to that found in the French grape Syrah. You won't find jammy, overripe reds made in the region, despite the intense summer heat. 'Carnuntum wines are approachable', she said.

 

Lighter reds are also made in Carnuntum, from Pinot Noir and Sankt Laurent. I find it hard to get excited about the former, as shown by the fact that I didn't write a tasting note about the Pinot Noir I was given at Weingut Markowitsch. I was more eager to try a Sankt Laurent, although the one I tasted at Weingut Glatzer reminded me of a Pinot Noir! Hanna Glatzer remarked that it has good natural acidity and 'silky and smooth' tannins.

 

         The next day I drove to the region of Wagram, an hour to the west. The soil is mostly loess and it was very sunny and warm, so my mind turned to Washington State, where lovely red wines, especially Merlots, are made.  Inspired by my time in Carnuntum, I asked a winemaker if Merlot was grown in Wagram. The answer was an emphatic no. Perhaps my question came twenty years too soon.  

 

 

 

The Other White Burgundy

        I’ve sometimes wondered if people in Champagne are aware that the name Bouzy sounds funny in English. Probably not! Nor is it likely that vignerons in the Burgundian village of Bouzeron realise that the name has a somewhat comical ring across the Channel.

 

In fairness, I imagine that very few wine drinkers in the U.K. have ever heard of Bouzeron, let alone drunk a bottle of the wine. I knew next to nothing about the village or the grape Aligoté when, always eager to learn about wine and practice a bit of French, I signed up for a webinar on the subject run by Vins de Bourgogne.

Bouzeron was only granted AOC status in 1998, becoming the sole village appellation in Burgundy to be dedicated to the grape Aligoté. (There is also a more extensive appellation called Bourgogne Aligoté, which allows higher yields and takes grapes from inferior vineyards on the plains and on valley floors.) Bouzeron covers a small area and is situated next to Rully at the northern end of the Côte Chalonnaise, in a small valley flanked by two ridges. The grapes are grown on marl and limestone on the upper parts of the slopes, with the more illustrious varietals planted further down.  

There are no premier crus in Bouzeron, I learned, but the appellation does boast 26 lieux-dits. The climate is semi-continental, with southern (méridional) influences. Expositions vary owing to the hills and rifts in the land. Recent vintages (2020, 2022 and 2023) were solar and hot, with the cold weather in 2021 serving as an exception, as in the Rhône Valley to the south.

Robin Kick, the Master of Wine leading the webinar, explained in admirable French that, surprisingly, six percent of the vineyard area in Burgundy is planted with the grape. It’s therefore more significant than you might expect in this kingdom of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. Compared to its famous white counterpart, Aligoté is more acidic and ripens later, which are distinct advantages in hot vintages.

Vins de Bourgogne was kind enough to send participants six samples of wine from Bouzeron in the post, to enable us to get a flavour of the appellation. I can tell readers that Aligoté does indeed have a ton of acidity – not quite at the Riesling or Albariño level, but very significant. The wines also had a lot of weight in the mouth.

At least a couple of the people involved in the online tasting deemed the grape to be ‘aromatic’, with white flowers, almond and stone fruits used as descriptors. Personally, however, I found it something of a challenge to pin down the aromas and flavours. My tasting note for one of the wines, for example, was that it was ‘like sniffing water, or Muscadet’, with maybe the faintest touch of lemon evident on the nose. Some of the wines definitely had a saline/mineral edge and the citrus character cropped up more than once in my notes, but that was about it. Either the French are just better at tasting than me, or the grape is in fact pretty neutral. I'll go with the latter. 

The ability of Aligoté to retain its acid, even in hot conditions, means that we may be seeing more and more of it from Burgundy in years to come. According to one vigneron who spoke in the webinar, it’s also ageworthy, and can be kept for a decade or more. I’m not sure about that. I can imagine it being like the mature Albariños I’ve had, which tasted very similar to the young wines but with less acidity.

At any rate, the future may well be bright for Aligoté in the British market. After all, who hasn't encountered a customer who can’t stand Chardonnay but loves white Burgundy?

Published in The Wine Merchant, June 2025.

The Wines of Washington State

   

          My American stepfather is ninety-three years old. Not surprisingly, he says he has ‘done a lot’ in his lifetime. This includes visiting forty six of the fifty states in the U.S.A., the exceptions being North Dakota (‘boring’), Colorado, and the two states in the Pacific Northwest, Oregon and Washington (‘no reason to go’).

 

          Needless to say, he’s not a wine drinker. Indeed, before I brought up the topic he had no idea that Oregon and Washington even had vineyards. As someone who avoids Pinot Noir, I share his lack of excitement about Oregon. Washington, though, is another matter, which explains why I travelled several hundred miles to attend a tasting in London.

 

          I warmed up for my journey south by drinking several bottles from this unheralded part of America, which I obtained in the Great Wine Co.’s stellar January sale. One was the 2018 Eroica XLC Dry Riesling from Chateau Ste. Michelle, Washington’s leading producer.

 

      The lack of familiarity with Washington hit home when a colleague asked if I knew they grew Riesling there before my purchase. (Yes, I did.) Anyway, the wine was off-dry with a lovely honeyed flavour, an endless finish, and the grape’s trademark crazy acidity.

 

          The vineyards in Washington are planted on a huge swathe of parched land in the east of the state. Rainfall is so low that irrigation from the broad Columbia River is essential. It’s very continental: hot (100 degrees fahrenheit, or about 38 degrees celsius, is common in July) and exceptionally sunny in the summer, but frigid in the long winters. I was told at the London tasting, for example, that in 2022 there was still a foot of snow on the ground in April.

 

        Unusually, Washington is phylloxera-free, owing to the freezing winters and sandy soil, and disease pressure is very low. Still, vintage variation is a real issue. 2011 was so cold that the Cabernet Sauvignon wasn’t harvested until November at l’Ecole No. 41 winery in Walla Walla AVA (American Viticultural Area), which extends across the state line into Oregon.

 

          Two grapes stood out for me at the showcase, Merlot (muh-LOW in American parlance) and Chardonnay. As Ryan Pennington of l’Ecole No. 41 Winery put it, Washington is 'one of the great places in the world to grow Merlot’. The Merlots I tried were indeed outstanding, with a heady aroma of blackcurrants, very soft tannins and ample body.

 

         Horse Heaven Hills AVA, a windy area where the heat is moderated by the Columbia River, is ‘where Merlot kicks ass’, according to a representative of Chateau Ste. Michelle. Throughout the state, the Merlot benefits from the fact that the temperature falls off a cliff when the sun goes down in the summer, helping the grapes to retain acid. In August, the diurnal variation can be as much as 40 degrees fahrenheit.

          Merlot is, I think, superior to Cabernet Sauvignon in Washington, which can be very tannic and austere, at least when young (the oldest vintage I tried was 2020). A lot more Cabernet is present in the vineyards, though, as the sought-after grapes carry a higher price. I can say that Washington Merlot does age very well, for I had Chateau Ste. Michelle's sublime 2016 Canoe Ridge Merlot, from Horse Heaven Hills AVA, before going south. 

 

          Chardonnay, the second most prevalent grape after Cabernet Sauvignon, was the other varietal which really made an impression on me in London. The fruit is grown in cooler AVAs like Yakima Valley and Ancient Lakes (the wine regions in Washington have really evocative names). The latter is both further north than most of the state’s best-known vineyard zones, and the soils have a higher calcium content, making it a good spot for Chardonnay. The ones I sampled had a lovely rich mouthfeel and a delicious pear flavour.

 

          I only had a few wines from Oregon in London, although many were available to try. In my opinion, the most interesting thing about ‘The Beaver State’ is that it’s where D. B. Cooper boarded a plane in 1971. As for the wines, they are expensive and you have to really love Pinot Noir, which occupies about 60 percent of the vineyard area. 

 

          I imagine that, like my stepfather, I will never set foot in Washington. It’s very far away and I’d be reluctant to subject myself once again to the American airport experience (long ago I spent a night of despair in Newark Airport). There’s something about the place that will probably always appeal, though. It’s not just the excellent wines, it’s also the thought of a daily dose of sixteen or seventeen hours of warm sunshine in the summer. When you live in Scotland, that’s not to be sniffed at.

           Published in The Wine Merchant, April 2025.