Love is blau
Wednesday 10/4 from 6-8 pm
$15 plus 10% off any wine tasted

Blaufränkisch is a native grape of southern Austria, with the earliest documentary evidence of it dating back to the 18^th century. It’s quite possibly considerably older than that, with some viticultural historians dating it as early as the 10^th century. The term “Frankish” in the grape’s name reflects a cultural distinction between West and East that itself dates back to Charlemagne’s capitulary. Frankish folks in the West cultivated classy grapes that are capable of making wine worthy of drinking, while only lowlife scum cultivated the abominable “heunisch” grapes (possibly derived from Hun) in the East. The distinction between Frankish and Heunisch is one of many in wine that underscore how wine is a screen upon which we project our political anxieties and theories of purity and danger, and I always find it hilarious when exhausted, hegemons of taste and of all that matters in wine sigh and bitch about keeping politics out of wine – you can’t, it’s already baked in.

Intrepid wine drinkers may find Blaufränkisch all throughout central and eastern Europe, but it’s in Austria where the modern-day story of the grape begins. The tale of Blaufränkisch is a well-worn chestnut that you might repeat with any number of grapes. Once upon a time, there was a grape, a very strange enchanted grape, that wandered very far, but with the end of World War II and the rise of mass-produced industrial wine, the enchantment came to a sorry end with oceans of thin, reedy wines that only needed to meet one criterion: they were cheap. Given the sad state of Blaufränkisch in the post-war era, it’s unsurprising that when you examine wine books from the 70s you’ll find little mention of Blaufränkisch. When you taste a good bottle of Blaufränkisch today, riveting and yet unassuming, it’s startling to consider how recently such wines have appeared. The grape’s fate began to turn in the mid-80s when the barrel-aged, properly farmed wines of Triebaumer began to show its potential. In general, we shy away from wines aged in new oak at the shop, as they have a way of monotonously papering over that which makes a wine distinctive, and I think the best Blaufränkisch wines see little or no new oak. Over the past 30 years, a small group of dedicated Blaufränkisch nuts has continued to push the edge of the envelope with what to expect from it, and we’re tasting one from a grower who is the most Blaufränkish-obsessed of all: Roland Velich.

Roland is a brilliant, genial, and turned-on narcissist of the sort with whom you are best advised to fold your hands, shut up, and listen, as he’s going to download a lot of information for you during the precious few hours you spend with him. Tasting Roland’s alte reben bottling, nearly 20 years ago, first opened my wine mind to the grape, and I’ve continued to watch as he offers various other cuvées. After tasting his 2021 “normale,” which we’re tasting tonight, I exclaimed to him in the soft of jet-lagged, half-drunk slobbering fanboy paean that I thought it was a superb vintage, and I had to restrain myself from hugging him. Without missing a beat, he replied, “It’s my best vintage yet!”