2015 Moric Reserve Blaufränkisch

Moric

Austria / Burgenland / Moric

Limestone dominates the soils where this is grown. There are three steps to the selection for this: sorting in the vineyard and on reception; then after one year in the barrel on lees; and again as the blend is readied for bottling. Spends four weeks on skins all up. Extremely northern Rhône on the nose and palate; exceptionally velvety in the mouth, too. Slow build, but build it does – impressively - in flavour intensity, complexity and structure. Ripe fruit with earthy minerals and spice. Deep and penetrating. – Ed Merrison, CellarHand

June, 2018

Mike Bennie

The Wine Front

93 points

Beautiful perfume shows ripe cherries, sour cherries, whiffs of salted liquorice, fennel, mint and undergrowth. The palate has this suppleness and silkiness, molten tannins and sweet, red berry fruit flavours. The flow is lovely, long and satisfying, with a light palate-staining richness lingering after each sip. It’s a fuller expression of Blaufränkisch, sweet and earthy, generous and lip-smacking, with a tang of cool acid to refresh. It’s a fine wine here.

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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.