Interesting article today in WineEnthusiast:
WE:NaturalWineLabeling
on how some makers of natural wine are being forced to obscure the origins of their wines by the regulating authorities.
In particular, Roland Velich/MoricWines was forbidden to correctly label his wine because it was disqualified as being “oxidized, reductive, faulty & atypical of the grape variety”. That’s very peculair. I’ve never had a Moric wine I thought to be oxidized. Furthermore, how can a wine be oxidized & reductive at the same time?? He was forbidden to label it as “Sankt Georgen Gruner Veltliner”. If it was made from the SanktGeorgen grape (one of the parents of GrunerVeltliner), then…doh…no surprise it was atypical of GV. If it was made from GV grown in SanktGeorgen, then it should be allowed to state it on the label.
Another disqualified wine was a HannesSchuster/RosiSchuster wine (probably BlauFrankisch) that had “too much SO2”. This wine clocked in at a whopping 26 mg/litre…well below the SO2 level for most commercial wines.
Question: When they identified the St.Georgen vine as one of the parents of GV, I know they took cuttings from that original vine (after it was vandalized & recovered from the dead) and were going to propagate it as a grape variety on its own merit. Does anyone know if that St.Georgen variety has been made into a wine on its own?? I’ve seen (and tried one/Moric) that was labeled SanktGeorgen GrunerVeltliner, but it was not clear if it was the actual SanktGeorgen variety or merely GV grown in the village of Sankt Georgen.
Anyone have any inside information & can shed any light on my question.
Anyway, a rather interesting read.
Tom