Wine & Spirits - April 2020 - 41

percent alcohol, whereas with chardonnay I would end up over fourteen percent." By 2016, too, and with István, Jr. taking the lead, a nowmore-than-100-acre Szepsy estate had become focused on dry singlevineyard bottlings. And Heidi Schröck, having enlarged her furmint
holdings in 2007, had not only refined her dry version, but repeatedly
demonstrated how profoundly delicious demi-sec renditions could
be. These growers, along with the Triebaumers and Schandls, put furmint's delicious diversity on full display: not just flowers (bee balm,
chamomile, hibiscus, linden) or fruits (quince and apple, lime and
grapefruit), but nuts, seeds and grains (hickory, caraway, peppercorn,
buckwheat, rye) as well as mineral notes (saline, stony, sooty, alkaline)
and even musky animal nuances.
From the perspective of climate change, such perfection of furmint,
free from botrytis, could not have been timelier. Increasingly dry vineyard conditions were making it hard for noble rot to get a toehold.
Between 2008 and 2013, the Wenzels bottled no Ausbruch of any sort,
let alone pure furmint. (Happily, they achieved a sensational furmint
Ausbruch in 2016.) When Heidi Schröck managed to harvest just 160
liters of 2010 Ausbruch from her Turner vineyard, she went to tonnelier
Franz Stockinger in desperation. "I asked him: What am I going to do to
give this wine the élevage it deserves?" and he came up with two custommade 80-liter casks. In 2014, it would be 90-liter barrels. Short of achieving prices equal to those that accrue at auction to Trockenbeerenauslesen from the likes of J. J. Prüm or Egon Müller, glorious Ausbrüche
such as these are bound to remain an economically losing proposition.

New OutpOsts
Asked in 2017 about the future of furmint, Paul Schandl expressed some
skepticism, "not just on account of its micro-climatic demands, but also
because I don't think furmint's taste profile will ever be embraced by
the broad mass of wine drinkers." After reiterating that "it should categorically be planted only in top sites," he revealed that he was replacing
a newly acquired patch of muskateller in the famed Greiner vineyard
with furmint. Asked the same question, Michael Wenzel gave a much
different and enthusiastic answer: "I am convinced that, within the next
several years, furmint is going to emerge from its niche." Niche indeed,
given that at the time, there were barely two dozen bearing acres of furmint in all of Austria, some 90 percent of that in Rust. But signs of an
emergence were at hand.
In 2013, Milán Árti of Weingut Esterházy, outside St. Georgen,
assembled his own selection of cuttings taken from old Tokaj vines.
Two years later, and four miles distant, Roland Velich, revered for his
innovative work with blaufränkisch, planted a genetic hodgepodge of
furmint at the edge of a marble quarry. "Ultimately, furmint is every
bit as much a part of our Pannonian culture and the tradition of German West Hungary as blaufränkisch," opines Velich, who, as a sort of
practice run, is fermenting selected lots from Hungary for his Hidden
Treasures label. "For centuries, furmint was the principle grape all
around the Neusiedlersee," adds blaufränkisch veteran Hans "John"
Nittnaus, resident on its opposite shore, and then reveals that thoughts
of furmint have been like "an itch that I am determined to relieve by
finally planting some." Two of Nittnaus' countrymen from far afield
recently beat him to that.
Gottfried Lamprecht was studying pomiculture at Austria's Klosterneuburg Institute but finding himself increasingly fascinated by wine.
When he discovered that the property in northern Styria purchased in
1913 by his great-grandfather had for centuries been a vineyard of the
Vorau Monastery, he took that as a sign and switched to viticulture. But
under EU regulations, permission to plant new vineyards is extremely
restricted. "It took several years of beating my head against a concrete
wall of bureaucracy until, in 2006, the wall finally gave way, and I could

begin planting," quips Lamprecht, who satisfied authorities that he was
reestablishing an historical vineyard on family land. "From the beginning, there was no question I was going to plant furmint, the first in Austrian Styria for probably a century," he explained. (Lamprecht's other
living history project is a field blend intended to incorporate every accessible variety known to have been planted in the region-now over 100.)
In addition to tapping the Rust and Tokaj gene pools, Lamprecht also
planted clones from Slovenian Styria, where there are still nearly 2,000
acres of furmint (known there as sipon) and where the prominent Austrian winegrowing family Gross has recently established an estate that
will focus on that variety. From its inaugural 2014 vintage, Lamprecht's
furmint-fermented in traditional 600-liter Styrian casks from the property's own oak-has displayed a striking alliance of textural richness and
cut, with a salinity that he attributes to the degraded sandstone of his
heat-trapping but well-ventilated site.
There is no record of furmint ever having reached Lower Austria,
much less north of the Danube. But in April 2017, Martin Diwald
announced that he had just planted some in the loess and red gravel
Eisenhut vineyard, coincidentally at the same latitude as Tokaj. In September of 2018 there were already a few incredibly spicy and delectable
berries clinging to Diwald's slender furmint vines. The following year, a
swarm of tiny berries, some drought-stunted and requiring painstaking
removal, sufficed for an initial crush; and by the time I arrived in midNovember 2019, the inaugural Diwald furmint had already fermented
into a profusely floral, infectiously juicy, mouthwateringly saline libation, lusciously ripe at just 11.5 percent alcohol, and harboring the merest hint of sweetness. No wonder his elastic visage, well-known to Austrian oenophiles, was grinning from ear to ear. n

MARTIN DIWALD PLANTED LOWER
AUSTRIA'S FIRST FURMINT VINES IN 2017.

WINE & SPIRITS

APRIL 2020

Wine & Spirits - April 2020

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