2013 Moric Reserve Blaufränkisch

Moric

Austria / Burgenland / Moric

This wine marries the great heritage of Neckenmarkt and Lutzmannsburg, and embodies Moric's concept of 'reserve' quality: selection in distinct vineyards with specific attributes regarding vine age, site and soil – just the best barrels coming out of these vineyards find their way into the Reserve Blend. Mainly based on limestone origins, the elegance and distinctive spice of the Neckenmarkter component and the earthy floral aromas of Lutzmannsburg combine to show a unity of great structure and finesse.

April, 2016

Gary Walsh

The Wine Front

94 points

Bramble fruit, juniper berry, liquorice and pepper, with maybe a slight sniff of caramel. Medium bodied, racy cranberry acidity and gravelly, silty tannin, with a good amount of depth and fleshiness, yet still carries the nerviness of this juicy and fascinating grape. Finish is precise and pretty long. Vibrant and charged with energy. 93 or 94 points, but who’s counting?

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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.