One of my favorite things working Living Wine: my fall visit at Grawu’s winery usually at the end of Summer or the beginning of Fall. We tasted a lot of wine, from the fermenting juice to wines in ageing or just released. It was also a chance to meet Lu, who helped Dominic and Leila on the all period. We started at Meteo on the Friday night, spent the morning in GraWü’s cellar and finish the lunch and the afternoon at our friend’s Auberge at Rielingerhoff with an unbeatable view. Here is a quick wrap:

Latest releases

The latest release, which is on a boat for NY at the moment, is tasting super well! A few surprises and some serious continuation.

The Pinot Nero 2020 is so friendly and yummy, still a meditative wine, still depth and complexity, but also more approachable than the 2019 and furthermore 2018.

GTO 2020, this macerated Gewurztraminer is continuing absolutely in the same register as the previous vintages. Fanboys won’t be disappointed.

The Pinot Grigio Ramato 2021 is absolutely ready. It’s not as bold and not as structured than 2020 but maybe more elegant. Hard to say which we prefer, I guess it will be a matter of personal taste.

And then there’s a new surprise wine, a beautiful new white macerated wine – stay tuned!

New “Roots” wines for next year

Dominic already produced a wine called GT Roots in the past, a very long maceration of Gewurztraminer. This was a beautiful and very precious wine, only made in tiny quantities.

The great news is Dominic has continued to work in that direction, creating several “roots”, from Gewurztraminer but also Pinot Noir and Chardonnay.

Always the same principles: single vineyard, small parcels (only the best), wines of purity, long maceration. We tasted the 2020 of these three wines, which were bottled this summer. Even the Pinot was a long ‘do-nothing” maceration… which is fairly unusual. Result is just “wow’. Great precision and depth, splendid wines. These beauties will only be released later in 2023, but they are also already really tasting well.

The 2022 harvest

Harvest was almost over when we visited, only some Riesling and Gewurztraminer missing.

Like in many places in the Alps, the harvest has been fairly generous and GraWu’s vineyards have mostly not been suffering from weather issues. Some wines will change in the future, as, along their own vineyard, Dominic started new collaborations with some great farmers in the Venosta vally, but also as unfortunately, had to stop collaboration with others. As ever, quality of the terroir and organic farming are of course minimum requirements… Among the good news, because of these new collaborations, GraWu will work with some  Pinot Blanc and Zweigelt. Can’t wait to see how this goes.

GraWü in New York!

We’re thrilled that we will finally welcome GraWü in the US. Dominic will be with us for 10 days, as GraWu will participate in Karakterre NYC as well as in Peripheral in Hudson. We surely will build a busy schedule for Dominic, stay tuned and don’t hesitate to reach out to us if you’re interested in the opportunity to meet and taste directly with Dominic!