Ep. 1131 Wolfgang Klotz Pt. 1 | On The Road Edition With Stevie Kim

Welcome to the Italian wine podcast. This episode has been brought to you by the wine to wine business forum twenty twenty two. This year, we'll mark the ninth edition of the forum to be held on November seventh and eighth of twenty twenty two in Verona Italy. This year will be an exclusively in person edition. The main theme of the event will be all around wine communication. Tickets are on sale now. So for more information, please visit us at wine to wine dot net. Welcome to another episode of On the Road Edition, hosted by Stevie Kim. Each week, she travels to incredible wine destinations, interviewing some of the Italian wine scene's most interesting personalities, talking about wines, the foods, as well as the incredible travel destinations. Hello. My name is Stevie Kim, and welcome to the Italian wine podcast on the road edition. Today, we are here in this town called Tremine, but also the name of the winery is Tremen. And this is a very special episode because we are here to celebrate their anteprima of this hundred point wine, this iconic infamous and famous wine called Epocale, and we'll talk about that in, just a little bit. So first of all, chow, wolfgang, Wolf gang Cloch. Charles Stevy on the border of Austria, and we have, Austria and heritage and culture side. So that's why you find here, Austria and Italy. We are Italian and, although we need to say that the culture is not the classical Italian culture, but it's just when you look around the housings, you don't field to be in Italy. So we either feel a South Turonian or Italian, I would say, or European. Right. So we, can you just tell us geographically for our audience where tremendous Exactly. Where is it located? So I would start, politically. We are if you think about Italy, straight in the middle between Milan and Venice, an hour and a half north towards the border to Austria. It's the only area in the south side of the Alps, where the valley is not tight as usual, but there's the valley opening up in this area. And that's where we are. So we have a combination of three hundred sunny days. Warm day temperatures in the hearth of mountains and glaciers. Yeah. So he's getting geeky on me already. And Alto Adije in German, it's called Suttiral. Right? So tell us a little bit about the winery because it's a very particular co op. Right? Yes. Exactly. So it's a cooperative, founded more than one hundred years ago in eighteen ninety eight. Back in the time, it was, fewer necessity because grape pricings were very, very bad, and also due to the fact that out to Adi, the ownerships are very, very fractionated. Back in the times, and still today, The whole area has five thousand hectares of Viticulture and five thousand wine growers. So you see that's one On the average. Yeah. On the average, one hectare. Producer. And so back in the times, as as today, there were not so much buying the grapes, but a lot of people selling the grapes. So the price was very bad. So this idea came up of the cooperative system. And it was the biologist of the village of Traami, who was the forcing power to engage a group of growers to invest in a winery, to produce their own wine, and to try to sell the wine and hopefully earn more than by selling the grapes. And as it's a system that started in that time, almost in every wine growing village in Alto adage, though, if you look, There are other cooperatives in the area. Every big wine village has a cooperative. Okay. So, basically, you have a bunch of wine growers. How many are there? Today, about one hundred sixty families. Working two hundred seventy hectares and owning the winery of the company. Right. So before we get into the wine, because I know we want to talk about that. Is it Gail Stromenor come from originally drumming? What we know and what we can say is that there is no proof for either one. Okay. So there's no proof of, saying it's not. Mhmm. Like, there's no proof that it is. Is one of the oldest grape varieties in the world. A lot of international grape varieties belong to Givelts Caminna. So knowing that, we know that Givelts Caminna started sometimes Bay long ago. And it's difficult to tell what happened back in a time. And I believe it's even not so important. It's important if the area, climatically, it's a good area for Gewirtz Tamina. And it's very likely that, Pramin gave the name to the variety. And we know that in the middle age, already, in a lot of places in Europe, they talked about, the wines from this area. Geverstamina really restarted to be an important grape variety in our in our to Addijer. So the first starts thirty five years ago, replanting of us, Amina. Well, it happened exactly thirty. You keep on saying thirty five years ago. What happened? Thirty five years ago. What happened? So to Addijer, and and I do understand also our company, thirty five years ago, had, for example, seventy five or eighty percent of the of the vineyards were planted with My favorite grape. Your favorite grape. It's scalable. Yes. And in the middle age, we know that three quarter of the Viticulture was white wine. Mhmm. And back in the time, wine was, a daily drink, and a lot means better. And Alto Adija is also the warmest German speaking wine growing area. Right. So the monasteries to them, it was very logical to use Kiaba to produce a lot of red wine. And that was the system. And at a certain time in the seventies eighties, that system didn't pay anymore because we know that consumers look more for good wine and not for a lot of wine. We can say that market showed us that we were wrong because we had scala Everywhere. At seven, eight hundred meters, yields on two hundred, twenty thousand kilos per hectare. Are you enjoying this podcast? Don't forget to visit our YouTube channel, mama jumbo shrimp for fascinating videos covering Stevie Kim and her travels across Italy and beyond, meeting winemakers, eating local food, and taking in the scenery. Now, back to the show. And when you're in a bad situation, it's it's it's much more easier to move on a change. And that happened thirty five. Right. Not only in Cantina. I mean, luckily, generally, in, to all of you. Okay. So tell us then now about Guilströmianer and the wines that you produce. Going back to that, how many wines to produce with Gailztraminer. Yeah. So we in Gailztraminer, we produce predominantly this, a dry style of Gailztraminer. And with that stylistic, we we created a stylistic by now known in the world as the Italian style of Gailztraminer, with no residual sugar, a good stamina that shows way beautiful in the glass. And although it is dry, it's very well balanced, highest and best interpretation of the dry side. In reality, that's your signature wine. Right? Because I found I got to know trimming of the because of the new bomber. Yes. And that's our signature wine, and that's our, most important interpretation of a dry Garztraminer, where we do fifteen to twenty fermentations. Some they go down to zero, some, fifteen, some one, stopped by shelling a little bit higher to do their final blend, and it's around seven to eight grass. Right. That's why we believe Tekebustomina grapes need to be ripe to cut the aromatics. And, basically, we looked at the skins, they became very weighed in, and with the thin skins, the aromatics cut into the wine. But what about balancing with the acidity? Right? Because when it's more ripe, you tend to lose a bit of acidity. When do you know it's the right movement to The right? The right moment is when the, when the skin becomes very thin in the way that the felons of the skin go into the juice, and and we have, by the end, the the the aromatics in the glass. So anticipating is not really an option. The sugar the sugar is already produced before. Right. And the acidity, it either is there, it's not. And that is due to the microclimate. And in fact, Cabotz Amina, if it's not on his dedicated area, it's almost impossible to get, result that this imbalance and still has the aromatics, what should be bought of geweldtraminer? What is the best microclimate for gewurzraminer? What is the optimal condition? We did this beautiful tasting today, and we had the honor to had Gabriela Gorelli leading the tasting, and he found a very good description for for the Gabbuz terminal, saying that it's a cool climate, great variety. That loves the heat or that loves warm weather? Yeah. One weather. Yeah. In cool climate areas. So he said even in El Paso, and Alto Adice, they're both more cool climate areas, but they need sun and heat. And that's what our best areas, the the south exposed, south facing, a lot of sun, but then this little bit of of acidity that the robustamena has genetically needs to be preserved. So we need to have cool nights. And here we with the Mandel Mountain behind of us, we got very early shadow, and we also have quite heavy soils. So is the What kind of soils do you have here? It's limestone, dolomitic limestone in combination with a good part of of clay, and this makes sure that it releases the heat much faster than deep sandy soil, for example. Right? And it's this combination. It's almost impossible to think about, but if we look outside here, where all this, hill this area here is not a good area for Gilbert's terminal. The Gilbert's terminal, the here, they go get overcooked. Decidity is lost. The wines got flat. And just this three hundred meters behind a little bit higher, that's where the balance and remains in the wine. Going a little bit higher. In our case, more than five hundred, five hundred fifty meters, it doesn't get the right. Oh, yeah. So it's to to, cool. ADs out of ten. Right. So the di you talked about the diurnal, temperature. Right? The difference between night and day. How how much of a difference? It How much of this? It's between night and day. During their growing seasons, obviously. And, obviously, it's important in the last part of the year of the growing season. Yeah. Yeah. And then at that part of the year, it's around about two twenty degrees. And it starts on Twenty degrees. Yeah. And it starts also earlier, that time of the year, four PM already sha the shadow comes in, and at two three PM, the wind of the lake, the aura blows two, keeps the grapes healthy to get the ripeness, and they bring also good ventilation. We do two two rice style, Gavitha Amina, New Spounder, and Salida. Salida? Yeah. Then we do since a few years, a more international style, Gavitha, Gavitha. Right. One has a little bit higher level of the sugar, then we do aceto. That's called, Rowen, like Rowen. Yes. The peak of the mountain here, what arrives at two thousand one hundred something meters. And then we have terraiminum. And what's the difference between terraiminum and Epercala? Yeah. The terraiminum is a late harvest with potritis. So it's a dessert wine with two or three hundred grams of a sugar, it's like a TBA. And and epocalia is a is a spade less where we just have. So usually or not usually at with epocalia when we see a little touch of sputitis or the first sputitis starts, that's the sign. To pick the grape. Okay. So when, of course, he takes for granted TBA means, something like that. Yeah. Or how do you how do you say it in Germany? And it's talking beyond ausles. Yeah. Exactly. So it is it's it is a a higher concentrated of residual sugar where spotless is at the very lower range. We hope you enjoy today's episode brought to you by the wine to wine business forum twenty twenty two. This year, we'll mark the ninth edition of the forum to be held on November seventh and eighth twenty twenty two in verona Italy. Remember tickets are on sale now, so for more information, please visit us at wine to wine dot net. Hi, guys. I'm Joy Livingston, and I am the producer of the Italian wine podcast. Thank you for listening. We are the only wine podcast that has been doing a daily show since the pandemic began. This is a labor of love and we are committed to bringing you free content every day. Of course, this takes time and effort not to mention cost of equipment, production, and editing. We would be grateful for your donations, suggestions, requests, and ideas. For more information on how to get in touch, go to Italian wine podcast dot com.