Blaufränkisch: Red ahead

With Grüner Veltliner securely established, Austria is looking to build the same success for its red wines. Is Blaufränkisch the answer?

Remember the early days of the Grüner groove? A country many people didn’t even realise made wine started trying to foist its unpronounceable product upon a nation that hadn’t really considered a life beyond safe Sancerre or Kiwi Sauvignon. Now Austria’s at it again, this time with the equally tongue-tying Blaufränkisch.

Is this the best red ambassador for Austria to deploy? Where does it fit commercially within a crowded, competitive UK market? And is now the right time for the variety to make its move? Working in collaboration with the Austrian Wine Marketing Board and the Institute of Masters of Wine, the drinks business organised a round table to put Blaufränkisch through its paces.

Aided by inspiration from a flight of top examples, specially selected to represent a spectrum of terroirs and vintages, there was an immediate consensus that Blaufränkisch is Austria’s strongest candidate for promoting itself as a source of high-quality red wine. “I like the structure of Blaufränkisch,” mused Lance Foyster MW, director of Austrian specialist importers Clark Foyster Wines. In particular he noted “the power, the firmness; there’s lots of ripe, juicy fruit that allows you to enjoy it, but it’s not frivolous – it veers between the frivolous and the intellectual”.

But what about Austria’s other red varieties? After all, Zweigelt occupies double the vineyard area of Blaufränkisch and St Laurent is also producing wines of high quality. For Silvia Prieler of Weingut Prieler, there is a strong case for focusing greater attention on Blaufränkisch in Burgenland, the region in which nearly all Austria’s plantings of the variety are found (Spitzerberg in Carnuntum also has a good reputation).

She highlighted its credentials as “the most planted variety in the region, sold for the highest price in the region, a variety that can express a sense of place with great ageability and very food friendly”. However, Prieler did add a note of caution, saying: “Blaufränkisch is not affected by disease that much but it needs to be on the right soil or it gets sour. It’s late ripening so in our region clay, slate and shell limestone are important factors to getting it ripe.”

In addition to its difficult nature in the vineyard, St Laurent was dismissed from the flagship competition hunt for only having just over 700 hectares across the whole of Austria, a factor which also ruled out all other red contenders except for Zweigelt.

However, for Willi Klinger, managing director of the Austrian Wine Marketing Board, this widespread variety is totally different in character. He explained: “Zweigelt is a good ambassador, but has it the final potential, the great wine potential, as well as entry-level potential? Blaufränkisch needs to be great; it needs elevage.”

This opinion was backed up by the winemakers, with Markus Kirnbauer, of K&K Kirnbauer, emphasising: “Blaufränkisch needs time; for the first two years it can be astringent so we launch ours later.”

With this consideration came the acknowledgement that Austria’s strategy for promoting Blaufränkisch should follow the same top-down path as its Grüner sibling trod a decade ago. With its high average UK price of €6.50 (£5.80) per litre, Austria has by and large realised that it should leave the high volume entry-level bracket to other countries. As Foyster observed: “Almost everything that comes here from Austria is expensive by the standards of our market.” On top of this, he pointed out: “You can make a big noise but the volumes are minute,” concluding: “It needs to trickle down from the top – that’s how we started with Gräner.”

There was general agreement also that the top end of the market – the upmarket restaurants and independent retailers – was likely to prove the most receptive arena for the complex communication demanded by Blaufränkisch.

Indeed, Foyster was wary of producers and importers trying to dumb down the message, saying: “I don’t think we want to over-simplify the situation, it is a grape that needs explanation.” This aspirational standpoint fits well with Klinger’s own view of the future development path for Blaufränkisch.

In his view, “We are looking for a very select audience worldwide. We’re trying to find those people who are looking for something unique, but with class and character.” In particular he felt that with wine lovers becoming increasingly alienated by the inflated price of good quality Bordeaux, there might be an opportunity for Blaufränkisch to steal some limelight.

Refining the most suitable positioning for this variety still further, Foyster suggested: “At the upper-middle level there’s lots that can be done. It’s not really gastropub level yet like it is with Grüner.” That said, Klinger looked a stage further into the future, splitting Austria’s red wine offer in the UK into two camps. In an ideal world, he predicted, “The cheaper bits of Grüner’s success will be held by Zweigelt, but the message of Blaufränkisch is for the connoisseurs.”

The question of timing this communication of Austria’s red wine prowess has not simply been about biding time while Grüner Veltliner built the country’s reputation abroad. In the domestic sphere, Austria’s track record with red wines is far shorter and shakier than its long, confident history of white wine production.

“Before 1985 our red winemaking was very elemental”, admitted Klinger. Since then, producers have explored and refined their use of malolactic fermentation and oak. Lynne Sherriff MW, consultant and chairman of the Institute of Masters of Wine, believes that this learning curve has now reached a point where Austrian reds are ready to become more widely discovered. “The quality that was always there before is now coming through – it’s not blocked by so much oak,” she observed.

Sherriff also felt that the success of Grüner should open doors for this new Austrian interloper, explaining: “You’ve built up a track record with a variety that’s unusual and the people who matter care about it.” However, she also warned of the difference between getting people to experiment with new white and red wine styles on the grounds that: “Red wine is typically more expensive. You might take a £35 chance but not a £50 one.”

Foyster agreed that Blaufränkisch faces a bigger hurdle than its white counterpart, sharing his own experience as one of the UK’s most longstanding and extensive Austrian specialists. “I sense that people are actually more receptive to unusual white wines than unusual red wines,” he remarked. “Sommeliers are receptive to Grüner Veltliner, but when I talk about Blaufränkisch or St Laurent they say that it’s easy enough to offer a table a bottle of Grüner to start, but then they move on to claret.”

Although most commonly found as a single-varietal wine, Kirnbauer maintained: “It’s also good to get Blaufränkisch in international blends like the Super-Tuscans.” However, while Klinger agreed that “the cuvée will always have a future in Burgenland; it’s very important and nice to have,” Sherriff’s advice was to keep the initial message simple. “Blends might be something that comes later,” she proposed, suggesting that even then, wines containing just a small amount of another variety might want to keep the front label Blaufränkisch-focused.

The message may be a tricky one, but certainly in terms of timing, Prieler feels the UK market is at last beginning to develop a natural curiosity about Blaufränkisch. Indeed, she tracked the progress Austria’s winemaking reputation has made since she first entered the UK market in 1995, remarking: “First people asked if I was Australian, then they asked for Gräner Veltliner; now, 15 years later, I am being asked for Blaufränkisch.”

With restaurants high on the priority list for Blaufränkisch producers and promoters, the issue of food matching reared its head. Klinger presented a realistic picture of Austria’s disadvantage compared with countries such as Spain or Italy, whose cuisines have such a strong presence in the UK. “We’re proud of our culinary culture but we cannot rely on our gastronomy outside the German speaking world,” he accepted, adding: “In New York there are lots of Austrian restaurants but that’s not the case here. But we’ve found our wines go well with a broad variety of cuisines.”

Once more, Grüner Veltliner may well have cleared a helpful path for Blaufränkisch, thanks to the close links it has cultivated with many oriental cuisines. On this note, Klinger argued: “It is clear that its firm character and forest fruit style lends itself well to spice.” Likewise Kirnbauer pointed to some early success in this arena, noting that the variety is already listed by the glass at London Michelin-starred, wine-oriented Indian restaurant Benares, as well as the similarly upmarket Cinnamon Club.

Despite the variety’s obvious gastronomic strengths, Foyster was reluctant to allow too much distraction from the core message. “Food matching is fine for sommeliers to play with, but if you’re looking for a way to enthuse people all you need to communicate is the quality of the wine,” he argued. “We need to focus on the fact that these are wines of intrinsic character.”

In this respect, there was very much a feeling that Blaufränkisch offers an entirely complementary partner for Grüner Veltliner. Neither variety is pushing to usurp the title of the world’s most noble, prestigious grapes, but both bring something genuinely original and desirable to the world of wine.

As Klinger summarised, Blaufränkisch is “intrinsically good, not a showy wine, but something that really gets you interested”. Importantly too for those who value wines that convey a sense of place, Blaufränkisch is not only a variety which has ventured little outside its Austrian heartland, but also one which expresses – and winemakers have by and large allowed it to express – its terroir. In support of this, Klinger recalled the evocative words of Neusiedlersee producer Heidi Schräck: “When I smell Blaufränkisch, I smell home,” adding his own belief that “there really is nothing more Burgenland than Blaufränkisch.”

So will Blaufränkisch take off? There are certainly early signs of interest. Most reassuringly of all is the knowledge from the early days of Grüner Veltliner that Austria has the patience, tenacity and belief in its product to stick to its guns. The time appears right, momentum is slowly building and efforts are clearly and realistically focused.

As the discussion drew to an upbeat close, Klinger expressed an optimistic sense of déjä vu: “I feel it in the air; it’s like the exciting moment when Grüner Veltliner got a little kick.”

Perhaps in a decade we’ll know if his instinct was correct.