Northern Italian wine maker shares pinot noir secrets
View full sizeWinemaker Martin Foradori Hofstatter is from a part of Italy where cool-climate grapes thrive — including pinot nero, known to us as pinot noir.For insight and inspiration, Willamette Valley winemakers look to the Old World: France has Burgundy, the motherland of pinot noir and chardonnay, or Alsace, where pinot gris and gewurztraminer are major grapes. And Germany has the Mosel River Valley, the standard-bearer in riesling.
But it’s time for a paradigm shift, because increasingly, Oregon wine country passports are being stamped with the seal of a different European nation: Italy.
I’ve recently written in this column that Portland is a ravenous Italian wine market. Now, in the next two columns, we’ll meet some influential Italians who are shaking up the local wine scene.
For today, forget everything you thought you knew about Italian culture and wine, because we’re going to take a trip to the steep slopes of the Alps and the Dolomites, where the predominant language is German, not Italian. In fact, the locals call this part of Italy “Sudtirol,” Bavarian speak for “South Tyrol.”
And for good reason: It was part of the Austro-Hungarian state of Tyrol until 1918, and then spent the next three decades bouncing between German and Italian rule.
In keeping with its Teutonic tilt, Alto Adige specializes in cool-climate varietals: pinot nero (aka spätburgunder, aka pinot noir); pinot bianco (aka pinot blanc); pinot grigio (aka pinot gris); and gewurztraminer (thankfully, this one doesn’t see as many translations). Are you with me, Oregon wine lovers? Sounds like home, doesn’t it?
And now, consider this: The underappreciated indigenous varietal of Alto Adige, lagrein (that’s lah-GRINE), is poised to be Oregon’s next “it” grape. From Illahe Vineyards in Dallas to Montinore Estate in Forest Grove, plus a couple of other growers besides, lagrein is the grape that a group of forward-thinking Oregon growers are planting and fooling around with.
Why? Just ask Martin Foradori Hofstätter, whose lagrein might possibly be the best on the planet. When Foradori Hofstätter swung through Portland recently, his arm was in a sling, the result of a cycling accident in Italy.
“Oregon is a lot like Alto Adige,” the vintner told me when I asked him about the injury. “We have the beautiful Dolomites where we can ski, bike, hike, everything. We just have much steeper mountains and also much steeper vineyards.” (Indeed, his mountainside vineyards rise up to heights beyond 2,600 feet.)
Foradori Hofstätter’s familiarity with Oregon comes from experience. As the producer of what’s been called Italy’s best pinot nero (or noir, or however you want to say it), he makes frequent appearances at the International Pinot Noir Celebration (IPNC) in McMinnville. He also counts among his compadres David Millman of Domaine Drouhin Oregon, David Adelsheim of Adelsheim Vineyard, Rollin Soles of Argyle and ROCO, Jason Lett of The Eyrie Vineyards, and many more from the home team.
Family winery
Foradori Hofstätter shares with these Oregonians a love of pinot noir that supersedes the cultural differences between them. The Hofstätters were originally innkeepers with a side business in oenology; their 16th-century hotel is now the family winery.
In recent years, under Martin Foradori Hofstätter’s guidance, the winery has produced, by some estimations, the best pinot nero, gewurztraminer and lagrein in all of Italy — and this in what might be Italy’s most challenging terrain. Within a valley just four miles wide, the patchwork of wildly diverse soil types and microclimates set into steep mountainsides is so varied as to support everything from Muller-Thurgau to merlot.
But Foradori Hofstätter has his sights set squarely on pinot noir. And he’s got some definite rules on how to go about making it. “In my estate, to be clear, we have an over 150-year-old tradition with pinot,” he explains.
“You need to have excellent vineyards, and, very important, old vines,” Foradori Hofstätter says. “Pinot starts to bring excellent results only after 30 years.” (Ahem. For all those American producers of high-priced pinots, debuting from 4-year-old vineyards over the past decade, this message might be a difficult pill to swallow.)
Another pearl of wisdom from Alto Adige: “No collateral damage with oak.” The juice from J. Hofstätter’s youngest pinot plants doesn’t see any oak at all — just stainless steel. The reserva, made from vines with approximately 20 years of age, goes into neutral oak, or barrels that have already been used three or four times. Only the single-vineyard bottlings, from the oldest vines, dating back to 1941(!), see the insides of those small new-oak barrels that are so prevalent here in the U.S.
And then, after their time in those small barrels, J. Hofstätter pinots get another eight to nine months of mellowing time in large, oval-shaped oak casks, plus a minimum of six months in the bottle to soften up even more prior to release. “We want to give the wine time. In all these years we have seen that the wine needs a certain amount of months … to calm down,” Foradori Hofstätter explains.
And so, if you look for the current vintage of J. Hofstätter’s top pinot, the “Barthenau,” in the local market, you’ll find the 2008. The 2010? No way. Not ready yet.
Of course, many local vintners are rushing to get their 2010s out right now for cash-flow reasons. Because it’s expensive to warehouse a wine you could be selling. And oversized oak casks? Fuhgeddaboudit. Too costly.
“A wild boy”
But there is one way in which Oregonians are increasingly taking the example of J. Hofstätter to heart: We’re beginning to get into lagrein.
Foradori Hofstätter describes lagrein as “a wild boy,” “a wine with edges,” and “not everybody’s darling.” It’s not, in his words, “sweet, soft and round.” This is a wine driven by acidity and tannins. It’s a rough wine, for pioneer people.
Or for someone who has been launched over the handlebars of his bike in the Dolomites. It’s a wine for a frontiersman, or someone with his arm in a sling.
Remy Drabkin, the spritely McMinnville proprietor of Remy Wines and a rising star on the local oenological scene, was the first Oregonian to bottle lagrein on its own (rather than as a blend). She barrel ages hers for a minimum of two years, in American oak, then bottle ages it some more; you can find only her 2008 vintage ($48) now. And it’s a mere 11 percent alcohol by volume, in an era when 14 percenters tend to lead the pack.
It’s a wine that makes no sense, until you taste it. And then you want to drink some more. And then climb a mountain.
I would have loved to have talked with Drabkin for this article, but I couldn’t catch her by the time my deadline rolled around. You see, she was in northern Italy, on a pilgrimage.
She was going to a mountaintop, to see a man for advice on making wine.
The man’s name? Martin Foradori Hofstätter.
Note: You can look for J. Hofstätter wines at Fred Meyer Wine Steward stores, ER Wine Shop, Lilac Wine and Strohecker’s; or ask your wine merchant to order them through Odom-Southern. Wines not to miss: The 2006 J. Hofstätter “Joseph” Alto Adige Lagrein ($24); the 2009 J. Hofstätter “Joseph Meczan” Alto Adige Pinot Nero/Blauburgunder ($26); and, for a super-special occasion, the 2008 J. Hofstätter “Barthenau Vigna S. Urbano” Alto Adige Pinot Noir ($88.50), sourced from a single vineyard where some of the pinot vines are more than 65 years old.
Follow Oregon’s wine scene with Katherine Cole on Twitter at twitter.com/kcoleuncorked and on YouTube at youtube.com/kcoleuncorked.
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