Biography
Termeno (Tramin in German) is a village in the lower Adige valley, a viticultural area to the south of the city of Bolzano which is famous as the home town of Gewürztraminer, a grape variety with a typical aroma frequently, and incorrectly, translated into Italian as “aromatic Tramin”: a more accurate translation would be “spicy Tramin” for the wine’s notable scent of cloves. Here the ancient Rhaetian people produced wine centuries before the Roman armies arrived and colonized the territory. In the days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in 1898, Christian Schrott, the parish priest of Tramin and a deputy in the Austrian Parliament, founded one of the first “Kellereigenossenshaft” (cooperative wineries) of the South Tyrol, the Austrian name for Italy’s Alto Adige region. Today, more than 110 years later, the Cantina Tramin has become a significant force in the economy of the region with more than 280 associates and 575 acres of vineyards under cultivation in the area around Termeno.
The production philosophy of the cooperative is to maintain, and give even greater luster, to the viticultural patrimony of the zone and to seek to preserve a harmonious and balanced relationship with the environment, to the point that many of the vineyards are cultivated according to the tenents of natural and biological agriculture. The product line is divided into a series of different quality levels. The more prestigious selections have been created to show off the high level of the various grape varieties and crus: the soft Schiava wines of the Freisinger vineyard, the fruity Pinot Grigio of Unterebener, the herbaceous Sauvignon of Stoan, the fragrant Pinot Blanc of Stoan, and the powerful Lagrein Dunkel of the lovely Urban vineyard. The speciality of Cantina Tramin is unquestionably Gewürztraminer, produced in a variety of different versions which express both the special aromatic characteristics of the grape and the specific vineyard source. The Gewürztraminer Roan is a late-harvest wine which is then aged in oak, an intense straw yellow in color, very fruity on the nose with notes of both citrus and tropical fruit mingled with spice and honey. Nussbaumer is a sort of grand cru of Termeno, one of the township’s oldest Gewürztraminer vineyards, long considered one of the finest spots of all for the cultivation of the grape. The wine has very intense aromas of both fresh and ripe fruit, spice, and dried roses; on the palate its flavors are of a rare intensity and purity, exceptional in their length and aromatic persistence. At the top of the quality pyramid is the Gewürztraminer Terminum, a wine of absolute stature and excellence, extraordinary in its aromatic concentration, potent and enveloping in its fused and balanced notes of fruit and spices, sweet and characterful in flavor and impeccably suave.