Blaufränkisch Is Great, So Why Don't More People Love It?
How about a catchy nickname? In any case, here are my 14 bottles picks.
This piece first appeared in The New Wine Review.
Sometimes I wonder if it’s all a matter of naming. Blaufränkisch, with its umlaut, three syllables, and foreign pronunciation, is always going to be a tough sell in the U.S.—at least outside the wine-nerd bubble. In Germany they call the same grape lemberger and in Hungary they call it kékfrankos—neither name much of an improvement to the American ear.
Therefore, I’ve often thought: Maybe what blaufränkisch needs is a nickname. When the Austrian white grape grüner veltliner came on the scene in the early 2000s, many wine people called it groo-gee. Many people still leave off the harder-to-pronounce “veltliner” part and just call it “grooner.”
This is why I sometimes refer to blaufränkisch as “Blue Frank.” Catchy, right? Who wouldn’t want to drink an affable Blue Frank? (Yes, I know, perhaps it’s like trying to make “fetch” happen).
I mean, if it matters, it’s also based in history, geography, and linguistics. Blaufränkisch literally means “blue Frankish,” dating to the age of Charlemagne—King of the Franks—when 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.
In any case, I once floated the idea of the “Blue Frank” moniker to Roland Velich, of Moric winery. To be fair, he—completely uninterested in gimmicks—looked at me like I was a fool, and replied, “It’s about substance. We’re still trying to figure out what we are.”
We were tasting exquisite Moric blaufränkisch at Velich’s home in Großhöflein, in Burgenland, 15 minutes from the Hungarian border. “This is where the German-speaking world ends, and the Slavic world starts,” he said. “This is the end of the Alps and the beginning of the Carpathian mountains.” Burgenland was actually part of Hungary until 1922. “We are Hungarians here,” Velich said. “The most prized wines of the 19th century were Hungarian wines. But we are playing catch up. We lost 100 years.”
Unlike other places in Austria that are focused on white wines, the higher elevation and cool microclimates of Burgenland—especially the subregion of Mittleburgenland west of Lake Neusiedl—is perfect for a red like blaufränkisch. “It’s a very special place, but it’s not as easy to make wine here as it is in, say, Spain,” Velich said. “The next big step, of course, is to prove that blaufränkisch can be a collectible wine.”
As Velich poured each of his exquisite blaufränkisch, each from a different vineyard in Mittleburgenland, each one of the finest expressions of the grape, he lined the bottles on his mantle above the fireplace: the intense Reserve, full of dark, brooding spice; the big, deeply earthy Lutzmannsburg, from 100-year-old vines, like picking berries in 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.
Some compare blaufränkisch from Burgenland to cru Beaujolais or northern Rhone syrah. But when I taste older vintages, great blaufränkisch reminds me of Nebbiolo. With the combination of juicy freshness, a savory core, surprising dark mineral notes like hot asphalt on a summer day, and beautiful aromas of rose petals, they could easily fool a lot of Barolo aficionados.
Besides Moric, look for blaufränkisch from other great Burgenland producers such as Markus Altenburger, Claus Preisinger, Heinrich, Nittnaus, Wachter-Wiesler, Weninger, Kolfok, as well as famed natural-wine names like Christian Tschida, Judith Beck, and Gut Oggau. As a region, Burgenland is a worldwide leader in organic, biodynamic, and sustainable winegrowing.
One of the most memorable blaufränkisch I ever tasted was from Christian Tschida. Tschida and I were eating at a country inn across the street from his house. We sat outside and looked across the vineyards at Lake Neusiedl and ate fried chicken and potato salad and drank his blaufränkisch.
At first, it was reminiscent of Nebbiolo (or Syrah, or Gamay). But as it opened up, I realized that blaufränkisch is something entirely different. It was as if we were tasting a grape from further back in time. In the dark, we could see the outline of an old stone well, and beyond that, reeds on the lake softly undulating in the breeze. “You know, as this century rolls on, with all our technological changes, wine like this will be the only real thing that still exists,” Tschida told me. “I really believe this. Wine won’t change. The real thing will still have to exist, just like in ancient times.”
That’s all pretty poetic, and gets at the heart of why people love wine. But I still think blaufränkisch could use a little help over here in the prosaic American market. That’s why I’m still trying to make Blue Frank happen. Give it a chance, people.
Betting on Blaufränkisch
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