Press Reports
Wine Magazine - Sweet Success — 09/01/2005
Award-winning wine maker Willi Opitz proved to be the host with the most during harvest time at his Austrian Vineyard
Willi Opitz knows how to capture an audience. The moment we arrived it was off the coach and into the vineyard, secateurs and buckets at the ready. A quick lesson on botrytis recognition wasn't hard, as infection was virtually total. Then down to some serious snipping. Willi told us that we were picking Beerenauslese level grapes. He was almost dancing with delight between the rows of vines, spurring us on to further grape-capture.
It was the middle of October and I was part of a group of wine tourists on an Arblaster & Clarke Austrian extravaganza. We were in one of Willi's vineyards near Illmitz, face to face with seriously botrytis-infected Scheurebe. The vineyards near llmitz and Apetlon, between the vast Neusiedlersee lake and the Hungarian border; are particularly susceptible to botrytis because of all the lakes in the area.
As Willi explained, this level of ripeness and botrytis was unusual this early, but the grapes were absolutely perfect. After a couple of hours and a few rows, it was on to watch the grapes being weighed and sampled at the monitoring station. Willi was right, they were comfortably over the Beerenauslese minimum level. What's more, we had picked not just Willi's first Beerenauslese grapes, but the first in all Austria!
At the Opitz winery; our grapes had just arrived, and Willi was jubilant. At the start of pressing the lowest sugar reading was just under Beerenauslese, and, as the pressure increased and the juice grew denser, he was waxing lyrical about the first Beerenauslese of the new century.
Back at our hotel, the group enthusiastically sat down to an extensive wine and food tasting, ranging from a dry rosé made from black Zweigelt grapes to a bottle of sumptuously concentrated Goldackerl Trockenbeerenauslese from the 1998 vintage.
We started with ham and truffle oil and the rich, honeyed, savoury Silver lake 1999 went brilliantly. While the apricot and grapefruit flavours of the Goldackerl Spätlese complimented a dish of goose liver with Beerenauslese jelly. There was goulash with a choice of two reds: the light, easy-drinking plum and berry-fruited Rotschenkel 1999 and the savoury cherried, elegant Saint Laurent Reserve 1999. The Goldackerl Beerenauslese 1998 was another wine star light, elegant and grape-fruitily aromatic. The strawberry and honey fruit of Willi's famous sweet red, Opitz One, matched the Castello Blue cheese, the Scheurebe Eiswein 1999 was great with fresh pineapple, and the Goldackerl Trockenbeerenauslese was just right for the Charentais melon.
I stayed behind alter the rest went to bed and listened to Willi's story. How his parents worked for wealthy neighbours in return for a day's loan of their tractor. How the first wine he made from his grandfather's grapes, won a gold medal in the local show (the neighbours only won bronze!). How his bank manager didn't believe that he wanted a loan to buy a tractor, rather than a Mercedes. How winning the International Wine Challenge Sweet Wine Maker of the Year meant so much to him. How an introduction to Ron Dennis, boss of the McLaren Formula One racing team, took his business to an entirely different level: Opitz wines are now sold under the McLaren Racing brand all over the world.
Next morning, we admired the racks of Zweigelt grapes for Opitz One, drying on reed-covered racks. Willi told us the grapes we had picked were so high in sugar that he would have to blend them with less ripe Scheurebe grapes to create balance. We left, thoroughly Opitzed and applauding Willi showman and winemaker.
Charles Metcalfe
