South Tyrol

South Tyrol tastes of mountain air, apple orchards and wine roads

South Tyrolean specialties bring together only the best of what ends up on the table between the Vinschgau and Pustertal valleys: fruit spreads from Prags, mountain apple juice from the Ritten, Gewürztraminer and Lagrein from the Wine Road. Plus bacon and sausages from the Antholz Valley, rye bread from the Ultental, mountain herbal tea from Martell and sauerkraut from Laas. Alpine, bilingual and made by families who know their altitude.

South Tyrolean specialties at nur Gutes are the products of a province that belongs to Italy yet tastes of the Alps. The labels are in German and Italian, the ingredients grown at altitudes between two hundred and fourteen hundred meters. We stock preserves and bottled goods, baked items and smoked meats: fruit spreads, juices and cider, wine and herbal tea, bread, pasta, bacon and cabbage. Our Italy page features the country's southern regions, from Piedmont to Sicily.

Dumplings, Schlutzkrapfen and a rye bread

South Tyrolean cuisine is a farmers' cuisine of the highlands, which has gathered Tyrolean heartiness and Italian lightness at the same table since both languages became at home here.

In the valleys around Bruneck, Brixen and Sterzing, dumplings reign supreme, whether with bacon, cheese or spinach. They are joined by Schlutzkrapfen—those crescent-shaped pasta pockets filled with spinach and quark—barley soup and Kaiserschmarrn. The bread of these valleys is made from rye, as wheat barely thrives above a thousand meters. This includes the thin, crunchy Schüttelbrot and the Vinschger Paarl, the recipe for which originates from the Benedictine monastery of Marienberg above Burgeis.

Further south, where the Etschtal valley widens and apple orchards border the vineyards, the cooking becomes more Italian. Polenta and risotto stand alongside Gröstl and Marende. The bacon, mildly smoked and aged for months in the mountain air, carries a protected designation: South Tyrolean PGI Speck. In autumn, the region celebrates Törggelen in the wine taverns, named after the "Torggl" (wine press), serving young wine, roasted chestnuts and homemade sausage with cabbage.

Gewürztraminer, Lagrein and Vernatsch from the Wine Road

South Tyrolean wine grows on steep slopes between Bozen and Salurn. The South Tyrolean Wine Road strings the wine villages together like pearls on a necklace: Eppan, Kaltern, Tramin, Kurtatsch, Kurtinig.

Gewürztraminer bears the name of the village of Tramin, where Traminer vines have been documented since the Middle Ages. It smells of roses and lychee, even though neither is in the bottle. Lagrein is the dark, velvety grape variety from Bozen, while Vernatsch is the light, pale red from Lake Kaltern that is as essential to the Marende as Schüttelbrot, accompanied by Pinot Blanc, Sauvignon and Pinot Noir.

From this landscape, we carry wines from the Kellerei Tramin, a cooperative dating back to 1898. Their cellar master Willi Stürz has been shaping the estate’s Gewürztraminer for decades. The vineyard-designated wines of Cantina Kurtatsch are grown by 190 families at altitudes between 220 and 900 meters—plot by plot, wine by wine, just as the house has done since 1900.

The Weingut Manincor in Kaltern has been run by Michael Graf Goëss-Enzenberg and his family since 1991, managed biodynamically, with the Kalterersee as a light red. And the Hofkellerei Maffei in Kurtinig has been fermenting cider from its own apples instead of wine since 2010. Giorgio Maffei won gold for his Iduna at the 2020 CiderWorld Award in Frankfurt.

Apricots in the jar, bacon on the hook, cabbage in the silo

South Tyrol's pantry begins for us in the Pustertal, in Prags at 1,250 meters. There, Stefan and Karo Gruber have been preserving fruit from their own harvest and partner farms since 1997. The process happens at 70 degrees under vacuum for just a few minutes, so that the apricot from Alpe Pragas retains its summer.

One valley over, in Rasen-Antholz, Josef Steiner cures his bacon for about three weeks and smokes it in cold beech smoke, now in the third generation. Afterward, it matures for four to six months in the mountain air, deliberately mildly salted. The South Tyrolean bacon, smoked sausages and venison salami from the Metzgerei Steiner come from pigs on small surrounding farms and game from the forests all around. Josef won five golds with his bacon and salami at the 2016 IFFA in Frankfurt.

South of there, chef Erich Gruber in Aldein at 1,200 meters crafts bacon noodles and Schüttelbrot noodles from free-range eggs. In Laas in the Vinschgau, the Lechner family slices their white cabbage thinly, salts it and leaves it to ferment in one of thirty silos to create Vinschger farmhouse sauerkraut. It began with Richard Lechner, who carried the cabbage in wooden barrels on his back to the inns of Meran and Bozen; today, the third generation runs the business.

Marende on the wooden board

The Marende is the traditional late afternoon snack in South Tyrol, and it requires nothing more than a wooden board, a sharp knife and time.

On it go thin slices of bacon, smoked sausages, a piece of mountain cheese and Schüttelbrot to break apart. Accompanied by a glass of Vernatsch or Lagrein, a forkful of sauerkraut and a dab of spicy horseradish. Those who prefer it sweeter can spread the apricot preserve on the Vinschger Paarl. Children get mountain apple juice in thin-stemmed glasses, just as Thomas Kohl recommends, because the stem keeps a warm hand away from the cool juice.

In the evening, the bacon noodles are tossed in brown butter, or Schüttelbrot noodles are served with a cream sauce and raw ham from the Eggerhof. In autumn, Törggelen moves into your own kitchen: chestnuts in the oven, jarred cabbage with bacon, a young Lagrein, and farmhouse "Zelten" fruit bread or Ultner Brot bread chips.

As a gift, South Tyrol tells the story of an entire evening in a traditional farmhouse parlor: bacon and Paarl bread, a jar of cabbage, a bottle of Gewürztraminer and a bar of chocolate from the Sarntal, where the Oberhöller family fills milk chocolate with apricot and stirs creams from hazelnuts and pistachios. Whoever unwraps this will set the table immediately.

Apple affineur, master baker and herb rebels

Behind the South Tyrolean specialties at nur Gutes are people whom we have been visiting for years and know by their first names.

On the Ritten above Bozen lies a high plateau where hardly anyone expects apples. There, Thomas Kohl picks his apples around the Troidner Hof in Unterinn at 900 to 1,000 meters—late in the year, acid-toned, by hand. The "apple juice affineur," as he calls himself, presses them as single-varietal juices or as a cuvée with a second fruit, naturally cloudy and unfiltered. His Pinova mountain apple juice was named the best fruit juice in Italy in 2019.

In the Ultental, Ultner Brot has been baking at the Eggwirt in St. Walburg since 1919, founded by Maria Pircher-Schwienbacher. It was her grandson Richard who was one of the first in the valley to convert the bakery to organic in 1982. Today, master baker Hannes Schwienbacher runs it in the fourth generation, with his own mill, naturally cultivated sourdough, a stone oven and spring water from 1,600 meters.

And in the Vinschgau, between Martell and Mals, Lorenz and Leander, the South Tyrolean Herb Rebels, harvest mountain herbs and blossoms by hand at up to 1,400 meters. They wait for the exact moment when the mountain air has given the plants the most aroma. The two qualified herb farmers blend them into seven mountain herbal teas, from Alpine mint to "Abendrot" (sunset), gently dried and packaged by hand together with the Lebenshilfe organization.

From apricot season to farmhouse Zelten

South Tyrol has a glass, a bottle and a bread ready for every season, and the order is dictated by the valley.

In spring, Terlan asparagus arrives on the table with ham and Bozen sauce, paired with a Pinot Blanc from Kurtatsch. In summer, apricots ripen in the Vinschgau, and mountain apple juice with elderflower is enjoyed chilled on the terrace. Autumn belongs to Törggelen, young Lagrein and fresh cabbage. From November, farmhouse Zelten bread with figs, nuts and honey, gingerbread and nut stollen from the Ultental provide a fragrant welcome.

Ready-packed specialties from South Tyrol, from jars of apricots to crates of bacon and wine, can be found in our gifts collection. Those looking over the Brenner Pass will find neighbors in Austria with Grüner Veltliner and apricot dumplings. The other countries that fill our shelves are listed in the regions overview.

And if you want to know what a province that speaks two languages tastes like, then start with a slice of bacon on a piece of Paarl bread—the rest of the valley will follow along on its own.