We have a dozen wines from January, divided into two equal parts. Here in Part 1 there are wines from Austria’s Burgenland, NE Italy, Alsace, Eastern Switzerland, a new wine and a new producer to all of us from Czech Moravia, and a soulful, terroir-driven Mosel. So, you see, January doesn’t have to be dry! These wines would brighten anyone’s first month of the year.

Graue Freyheit 2020, Heinrich (Burgenland, Austria)

It seems almost odd that the first wine I drank this year, on New Year’s Day, could be a contender for Wine of the Year already. I suppose something about this wine pressed all the right buttons. Gernot and Heike Heinrich are a couple of experienced natural winemakers in Gols, on the northeastern side of the Neusiedlersee. It’s a village blessed with more stars than most. Off a mix of schist with quartz and chalk, this is a blend of 20% Grauburgunder (Pinot Gris), 50% Weissburgunder (Pinot Blanc), with 15% each of Chardonnay and Neuburger.

The grapes see two weeks on skins in amphora before a gentle basket press. Ageing is for 17 months in a mix of both amphora and large oak, on lees of course. This is a pure, natural wine, and sees no added sulphur. The nose really hits you, but like expensive perfume more than something hard-edged.

The wine is a lovely orange-pink, derived from the pink skins of the macerated Pinot Gris, but the bouquet is a mix of red fruits, a hint of exotic or tropical fruit, and a whisp of tea leaf. The palate has considerable depth at this stage, but there’s also plenty of freshness and a bit of mineral texture. A decent lick of acidity balances it all perfectly. With a very long finish, this wine is quite unique. Bottled with no fining/filtration, we are asked to shake the bottle to distribute the lees, though I like to sneak a taste clean before doing so.

When I say “bottled”, it comes in a flagon. Someone (hi Valerie!) pointed out that these containers are not very eco-friendly, and perhaps that can be argued on weight grounds. However, I’m a sucker for these flasks, and they are always recycled as candle sticks chez nous.

I think my bottle came from Cork & Cask in Edinburgh perhaps a year ago. Indigo Wine is the importer and The Sourcing Table is a good bet for London etc readers.

Refosco 2019 Friuli Colli Orientali DOC, Az Ag Specogna (Friuli, Italy)

Refosco is one of wider Friuli’s autochthonous grape varieties. It’s rare for it to travel to other countries, not just as a planted grape variety, but even as a wine, but it does deserve to be tried. It wasn’t that long ago that I posted about this producer’s Pinot Grigio Ramato, which I have known for many years. That’s what led me to try this red wine.

Specogna are based in the Rocca Bernarda Hills near Corno di Rosazzo in the province of Udinese. The winery was founded by Leonardo Specogna in 1963 on his return from working in Switzerland. His initial small vineyard has now grown to 25 hectares on gentle terraces of mostly marls and sandstone.

This cuvée is made from vines planted in 1998. The grapes are destemmed and undergo a gentle crush after a 15-day maceration. Ageing is in both 500-litre and 250-litre oak for 12 months. It’s a rich ruby red wine with blue-violet towards the rim. The bouquet is deep, dark, fruits with a tiny hint of liquorice. The palate adds in dark cherry fruit with supporting blueberry and a touch of blackcurrant. The finish is savoury, with some tannic grip, and it is very food-friendly. I can’t speak for its natural wine credentials but it is listed as “vegan” and “sustainable”, though I never really like that vague term. One thing I can vouch for (or perhaps two things?), its very good and very interesting.

£22 from Valvona & Crolla in Edinburgh.

“Zegwur” Cuvée Nature 2022, Anna, André and Yann Durrmann (Alsace, France)

It’s true that I do tend to buy a few of each vintage from Yann Durrmann, and have done since I first visited his father in Andlau back in 2017. I’m rather pleased that nowadays I don’t have to travel far to find these wines.

Zegwur is a rather distinctive Gewurztraminer, made, along with all the wines at the domaine now, by André’s son, Yann. This is a domaine which has had a long tradition of truly sustainable viticulture, of which I have seen a whole lot of evidence in the vineyard (among other things, this was the first estate where I saw sheep in the vines). Now, Yann is moving to totally natural wines, the “Cuvée Nature” range all having zero added sulphur.

This Gewurz is off granite and sandstone. 25% of the fruit undergoes a three-week maceration on skins. The result is cloudy, slightly funky, pretty high in acids (remember that this is the current vintage available) and yet it explodes with fruit and a bit of dry extract. Someone said it reminded them of the tropical fruit drink, Lilt, and what a perfect description that is, except this wine is dry. It also weighs in at just 11.6% alcohol. Despite its “natural wine” funk, my good Gewurztraminer-adoring friend loves it (this was the second time we’ve shared a bottle with her). So maybe it’s not as scary as all that. Obviously, I like it, but then I’d rarely drink one of those 15% abv Grand Cru versions of the variety that a wine magazine might recommend.

£28 from Cork & Cask in Edinburgh, but available through the UK importer, Wines Under the Bonnet.

Blauburgunder 2018, Bechtel Weine (Eglisau, Switzerland)

This is the third bottle from this vintage I’ve drunk, and sadly my last Bechtel Wine, for now. You may therefore already know, I’ve said it often enough, that Matthias Bechtel is considered one of the rising stars of Swiss Wine, and that Eglisau is a tiny sub-region of German-speaking Switzerland, on the banks of the Rhine not too far from Zürich. This part of the country is known as Deutschschweiz. Although we are beginning to see a desire among Swiss producers to export growing in proportion to the Swiss home market’s desire to drink less wine (fools), still much of the Swiss wine that comes to the UK is from the French-speaking part of the country (Suisse Romande).

There is undoubtedly a wine revolution taking part in the German-speaking Cantons and I’m always keen to try to find good examples. Bechtel is certainly one of the best and so it’s very pleasing that a range of his wines are in the UK. They doubtless don’t sell like the proverbial hot cakes do, but then as well as having a certain obscurity here with consumers and professionals alike, they are also not particularly cheap. That’s the down side of exploring Swiss wine.

The Blauburgunder is, as you might guess, Matthias’s entry-level Pinot Noir. I said these were expensive, but if this costs around £37, then the top Pinot Noir, named Bechtus, retails for a little short of double that (with a few cuvées in between).

I’m still not sure this 2018 is fully mature. It comes off sun-kissed sandstone terraces above the Rhine, with a micro-climate positively affected by the river’s reflective sunlight. This was equally a warmer vintage for the region. The bouquet is towards the darker fruits end of the spectrum for Pinot Noir, along with a savoury/smoky note. There is still structure to the palate, although almost all of the tannins found in previous bottles have been absorbed. The fruit is good, as is the length. I’d suggest that “entry-level” doesn’t do this cuvée justice at all. Well, I’m definitely a fan. Just as well because I’m not going to pretend I can afford Bechtus, nor the straight “Pinot Noir” at £52+.

Alpine Wines imports Bechtel Weine. They have both the 2019 and 2020 of the Blauburgunder, plus currently a good selection of his other wines. My last bottles of this Blauburgunder came through The Solent Cellar, though they don’t have any at present.

Cabernet Franc 2022, Mira Nestarecová (Moravia, Czechia)

I’m very excited to try the new wines of this producer, especially as it was her more famous husband who provided my first bottles of Czech wines. Of course, Mira is making wine in the same village, Velké Bilovice, in Southern Moravia. This Cabernet Franc comes from 17-year-old vines off sandy soils. This really is low intervention viticulture because these vines are not even pruned (frowned upon by many, yet so many estates are now following this path with great success, not least Meinklang in Austria and Domaine Lissner in Alsace, to name but two). The grapes underwent a short, whole-cluster, fermentation with stems and the wine was aged in old barriques for eight months.

The labels for Mira’s wines are all inspired by her former career, that of a dancer and teacher of ballet. This one depicts Mary Wigman (1886-1973), a German dancer and choreographer who was a pioneer of expressionist modern dance, as well as a cultural icon of the Weimar years.

The wine is deep purple with a magenta rim. The bouquet is dark-fruited with a little spice, the palate a nice mix of blackcurrant and dark cherry fruit. Plenty of freshness comes through zippy acids which seem packed with concentrated blackcurrant (like the blackcurrant pies my mother made), and alcohol is low at 10.5% abv. A very nice intro for me and I’m looking forward to trying more of Mira’s wines.

It’s a concentrated, low-intervention wine with bags of joie de vivre, £29 from Basket Press Wines. There are also cuvées from Pinot Noir, Riesling and Sauvignon Blanc (prices £29-£31).

Schieferstern Purus 2016, Rita & Rudolf Trossen (Mosel, Germany)

I think the Trossens have become a cult producer, but such a thought would horrify Rudolf. He’s been making natural wines around Kinheim-Kindel (spanning the Middle Mosel between Erden and Kröv) since the 1970s, and saw the export market for quality German wine almost collapse in the middle of that decade because of Germany’s plainly stupid Wine Law of 1971 (which promoted mass production of semi-industrial Müller-Thurgau over artisan-made Riesling).

It may have taken decades for German wine to recover its status, but the uneconomic prices obtained for great wines in the meantime caused many hard-to-work terraces to become abandoned, so that back in 2019 Rudolf told me that owners could hardly even give these sites away. Since then, the Trossens have inspired several young winemakers to take up the cause, though I know that times are very hard for these young pioneers of the slopes right now.

Back to Trossen. The “Purus” wines are not just natural wines, but also go the extra step with no added sulphur. Rudolf says that long lees ageing stabilises the wine just fine without it. Schieferstern sees whole bunches of Riesling fermented in 500-litre stainless steel tanks for a lengthy seven months before a further eleven months ageing on lees (as the photo shows, pre-settling). Bottling is without fining or filtration, of course, so expect some fine lees sediment.

The nose is stunning. Lime zest combines with a procession of very fresh apple, apricots and exotic fruits. By contrast the palate is very mineral and stony. Overall, this is pure and stripped back and definitely still very much on the young side. I should have kept it longer, but it’s still a great wine if you love fine German Riesling in its purest dry form. Glorious to drink now, in fact quite a thrill if I’m honest, but it will improve (in the traditional sense) for many years, by which I mean that a wine expert will tell you it will “improve”, but what a joy to drink now (as in who knows what tomorrow may bring?)

My bottle came from Newcomer Wines, the go-to for Trossen, and who have several bottlings in stock. However, The Good Wine Shop (various London locations) claims online to have this 2016 currently in stock for £43 (but don’t quote me).