Red Traminer Freyheit – 2021

Roter Traminer Freyheit Orange Wine by Gernot Heinrich

The 2021 Roter Traminer Freyheit by Gernot Heinrich is an orange wine made from 100% Roter Traminer, fermented on the skins and bottled unfiltered in a clay bottle. Not a sweet Gewürztraminer as the variety might suggest, but a dry natural wine with an aroma that leads in a different direction.

Roter Traminer Freyheit is the single-varietal orange wine from the Gernot Heinrich winery in Gols, Burgenland, Austria, grown in the eastern Kollern vineyard near Breitenbrunn. There, the vines root in fossil-rich calcareous sandstone interspersed with eroded mica schist. This subsoil gives the wine its taut profile and a salty trace in the finish. With 13.0 percent alcohol, the 2021 vintage has noticeable stature.

The scent of hops and yellow roses

The aroma leads you in the wrong direction at first, because what rises here is reminiscent of a pale ale, of hops and yellow roses, of exotic fruit and bittersweet rooibos. If you smell it for the first time, you will involuntarily look for a beer glass on the table, only to find none, of course.

For all its fragrance, it remains dry on the palate, and that is the real surprise of this bottle. Powerful and graceful at the same time, it shows substantial extravagance, lingers long, and leaves behind a bitter note that leads directly to the next sip.

Its color lies between amber and pale copper and appears cloudy, which is part of the craft for an unfiltered wine. The fact that you are not holding a transparent glass in front of you is the visible result of 14 days of contact with the berry skins.

Hand-harvested in September and aged in amphora

The grapes were hand-picked at the beginning of September 2021, and everything that happened afterward was more of a process of letting be than interfering, as the fermentation started on its own. The eastern site near Breitenbrunn receives primarily morning sun, which allows the grapes to ripen more slowly and gives the aromatics their fine definition.

The grapes were left on the skins with the stems, which added color, tannins, and herbal spice to the wine before a basket press gently pressed them. The stems contribute a tart thread that gives this orange wine its upright backbone.

It matured for six months on the natural yeast in an amphora, a shorter duration than its siblings from the same cellar. In late March 2022, it was bottled unfiltered into a matte clay bottle that reveals nothing of its contents and received no added sulfur. The vineyards are Demeter-certified, and the winery is a member of the respekt-BIODYN association.

Roast chicken, chanterelles, and a soft washed-rind cheese

Crispy roast chicken from the oven calls for exactly this mixture of scent and tartness, because the skin brings fat that the tannins cut through.

Roasted chanterelles match the woody side, and a soft washed-rind cheese stands up to the spice without masking the wine. The bitter compounds assert themselves against the rind, while the exotic fruit catches the salt and holds the bite together. If the temperature is too low, however, little of the rose scent remains, and that is exactly what makes this vintage stand out.

The younger brother from the same cellar, the Roter Traminer Freyheit 2022, spent longer on the skins and matured in wooden barrels instead of clay. More skin-fermented wines can be found under Orange Wine, and lighter alternatives under White Wine.

Roter Traminer Freyheit – a natural wine and its values

• Origin: Wine from Austria
• Natural Wine
• Orange Wine
• 100% Roter Traminer
• Demeter certified
• respekt biodyn wine
• 13.0% ABV
• 5.6 g/l acidity
• 1.2 g/l residual sugar
  

Organic control body AT-BIO-402 – Austrian agriculture