This wine is matured for six months in large oak and steel barrels. This "Gewurtrammier" gives the wine its strong character: a heavily-laden and shiney straw-yellow colour. It has good concentration and a pronounced aromatic vein. It has a spicey, smokey note and a hint of dried flowers and roses that has a tendency to expand and thicken in the glass. It is quite thick with a well-balanced body and a noteably fresh and lively taste. Contains sulphites. Produced by WEINGUT J. HOFSTÄTTER - Rathausplatz, 7 - 39040, Tramin (BZ) - Alto Adige - Italy.
THE REVIEW OF GEWURZTRAMINER JOSEPH HOFSTATTER BY LUCA STROPPA
The producer
For a century, the name Hofstatter has been associated by connoisseurs with a producer of excellent wines in Alto Adige. It was Josef Hofstatter who laid the foundations on which the company has been built. He was actually a blacksmith, but he also produced home-made wine for his wife, Maria. Producing home-made wine was, in fact, quite common at the time. His love of wine came from these origins. It was not long before he abandoned his profession to dedicate himself with passion, talent and common sense to wine-making. And so, before long Josef Hofstatter wines became famous in Italy and abroad with a client base that gets larger year by year. After the death of Josef in 1942, the company passed on to his descendant Konrad Oberhofer and his wife, Luise. Konrad Oberhofer was perfectly aware of the potential of the family's vines. He was one of the first in Alto Adige to begin harvesting and making-wine separately, vine by vine, and to put these wines on the market, not as an anonymous product, but as wine with different denominations (the "Crus"). In 1959 Konrad's daughter, Sieglinde, married the wine-maker Paolo Foradori, whose family had been successfully dedicated to wine-making at Mazon near Egna for decades. With this marriage the best vineyards in Bassa Atesina were united. Termeno and Mazon therefore became the foundations on which, today more than ever, the company and the family stand. Management of the vineyards and the cellars has now been passed on to the fourth generation, Martin Foradori, whose young man's impulses and desire for innovation draw on nearly a century of experience.
Best with
This wine is excellent as an aperitif or with shellfish, duck's liver, oysters or gorgonzola cheese.
How to serve it
The wine should be served at 15 degrees centigrade. The best glasses to use are clear, transparent crystal goblets.
How to keep
This is not a wine for aging, even if it does have an unusual ability to stand the test of time. It should therefore be drunk within a few years of purchase. The bottles should be laid horizonatlly in a cool, dark, humid wine-cellar.