Tramin Unterebner Pinot Grigio 2023
£28.45
The wine
A rich, complex and characterful wine full of Alpine freshness, with elegant notes of pear, toast and melted butter layered with spicy tobacco and vanilla, running through to a long, mineral finish.
Unterebner is one of Tramin's most celebrated bottlings and shows what Pinot Grigio can do when it is taken seriously. Fruit comes from a high single site, part of the wine is fermented in large oak casks, and it spends extended time on its lees. The result has weight, spice and a nutty depth that bears no relation to everyday Pinot Grigio.
The producer
Tramin
View all Tramin winesThe village of Tramin gave Gewürztraminer its name, and the cooperative founded here in 1898 has spent more than a century proving the point. The grape's name means simply the spiced grape of Tramin, and although it is now grown from Alsace to New Zealand, this is where it started.
Around 300 grower families farm roughly 260 hectares on the slopes above the Adige valley, at altitudes running from 250 to 850 metres. That spread is the cooperative's greatest asset: Alto Adige is a narrow alpine valley where a few hundred metres of elevation changes everything about how a grape ripens, and every parcel here is vinified according to its site rather than pooled by variety.
Under Willi Stürz, who has led the cellar since 1992, Tramin has become one of the most decorated names in Italian white wine. Epokale, a Gewürztraminer Spätlese aged in a disused copper mine at 2,000 metres, was the first Italian white ever awarded 100 points by Wine Advocate. The region's Germanic history shows throughout, in the village names, the labels and the taste for precision.
