2016 Moric Burgenland Blaufränkisch

Moric

Austria / Burgenland / Moric

Roland had frost in spring but then the season was memorable for its beautiful autumn. The wines have great acidity, he says – a long-term keeper. Here we have about 20-25% whole bunches in the ferment – with, says Roland, very careful maceration of the whole clusters. It’s apparent on an extremely floral nose (violets) with bramble fruit. It’s a juicy, flowing entry with herbal whole-bunch notes chiming in with the fruit. Gathers spice and gravelly mineral input as it goes, then with lovely fresh cut from the tannins and acid. – Ed Merrison, CellarHand

September, 2018

Mike Bennie

The Wine Front

93 points

Out of Mittelburgenland and from the BlauMaster, Roland Velich. Moric really in the vanguard for this outstanding Austrian grape variety. This 2016 is very fine and fresh, barely touched by winemaking edifice and expressive of an acid-driven growing season. From old vines and biodynamic farming too. Ultra-lacy, silky red of very fine detail, layers of spice, high floral perfume and a general sense of fragility and delicacy. Hits the palate with a wafer thin glass shard of flavour, stains the palate gently and finishes with a breeze of pleasant sour cherry and waft of pepper. I love the sense of vitality here, a wine alive, dancing and refreshing and it’s best for spring and summer, you could say. Beautiful wine of filigree.

Standard Bottle Out of Stock

About Moric

For more than a decade, winemaker Roland Velich made an intense study of the world's greatest wines of terroir with the explicit goal of finding “that thing”, as he puts it, that a wine must possess in order to achieve greatness. When he felt he'd learned enough, he set out to make an Austrian red wine that belonged in the same pantheon as the great Grand Cru Burgundies, the Northern Rhône and the legendary vineyards of Barolo. So began the Moric project. Its medium is Blaufränkisch, expressed through ancient vines in a challenging growing region, meticulous biodynamic viticulture, obsessive sorting and fairly primitive winemaking techniques. The Burgenland Blaufränkisch is a brilliant starting point, while this beguiling variety reaches its zenith in the old-vine wines from Lutzmannsburg and Neckenmarkt.

About

Roland Velich comes from a Burgenland winemaking family but initially he worked as a croupier. It was 2001 when he kicked off the Moric project, working with seriously old vines that perhaps no one believed in quite as much as him. His zeal for this terroir and the Blaufränkisch grape has mercifully been matched by vision and skill. "Roland Velich makes the best Blaufränkisch on the planet. Full stop," says Jancis Robinson Purple Pages contributor, Alder Yarrow. Meanwhile this is also the favourite Blaufränkisch producer of Eric Asimov, the New York Times wine correspondent. "Moric, is a star in this world," he proclaims. And indeed he is.