Elena Walch: The History in the Cellars
The Elena Walch winery in Alto Adige / Sudtirol is iconic and inspirational. Elena’s arrival in 1980s launched a quality transformation that would reset what was possible for this mountainous region that is part Italian and part German.
Having sold these wines since 2004 - first at Walt Churchill’s Market and now at Cutting Edge Selections - I was incredibly honored to be given a tour of the cellars with Owner/Winemaker Karoline Walch.
I hope you enjoy this eleven minute video.
Special thanks:
Karoline Walch of Elena Walch
Steve Noel http://childrenofthegrape.com
Transcript:
Note: Transcript was created by a third party service and I’ve endeavored to clean up the spelling of ‘wine words.’ There are also some Italian words that I have difficulty knowing how to spell. Any persistent errors are mine alone and not Karoline’s.
Or, watch the video. It is awesome.
Karoline Walch:
Elena Walch is one of the most historic estates in the region. It was founded in 1869 with my great, great, great-grandfather. Five generations ago, right here in Tramin. And up until today, the cellars that we use are in this very old historic building that was purchased in 1869, but winemaking really happened way longer before that. We even have an old barrel that dates back to 1700 something. Because this is a very old Jesuit monastery, used to be, so we know that the monks, even at the time, must have been making wine in here. So a lot of history, a lot of wine that these cellars have seen and seen go through.
Anyway, so 1869 is when everything happened, when everything started with my ancestors five generations ago, and the winery has been in our family ever since. So up until today, five generations later, it's my family, the Walch family owning the estate.
Everything changed with my mother, Elena. She married my father who was in the fourth generation of this estate. She used to be a former architect, born and raised in Milan, and marriage took her to this small little town of Tramin where she soon realized that there was nothing else but vineyards surrounding her.
So she always had this love and passion for wine, but she wasn't a trained winemaker . Her idea was always to make wines that were somehow the true expression of a single site. Wines that would speak for itself and would carry in a way, a certain signature. Her signature.
She started coming in and introducing a completely new philosophy and had a vision for the estate and started doing a lot of things differently and said, "Let's reduce yields." That was obviously one of the first and most important things. The trellising system went from the old pergola to the Guyot system.
Varieties obviously is a major point. At the time, mainly it was mainly Schiava that was being produced in Alto Adige. She introduced on a larger scale, more the international recognized varieties with the idea to really show the world the potential of our small little region. So she came in with a lot of ideas and a new vision for the estate, but really also for the region. Well, at some point said to my dad, "Hey, if I have all these ideas, I want my name on the label." And that's what happened in 1988. So 1988 was really when she started with Elena Walch, and what originally thought to be a small side project to the actual winery soon became its own major estate.
It's still called Wilhelm Walch, and so Wilhelm Walch is still alive, and Wilhelm Walch will work with contracted grape growers, so really families that have been delivering grapes for many, many years and many generations. So for example, we produce the Prendo Pinot Grigio that's part of the Wilhelm Walch book. And so we have farmers and families that deliver grapes. Whereas with Elena Walch, it's only estate fruit. So that's the difference between the two.
This is the oldest barrel we have that dates back to 1873, and they're all hand carved, you can see, and really tell the story of my family and the winemaking overall in the region of Alto Adige back in the days. So 1873 is the oldest that we have, and they go anywhere from say, 80 hectoliters to 180 hectoliters. So you can imagine the size. It's all Slavonian oak, and they are completely original. We're still using them.
And then here, for example, it really tells the story of my ancestors, of my family. So for every major anniversary or if someone passed away, they decided to dedicate a barrel to that person to that happening. For example, this was done for the 85 years of the estate. This one was done for the 80th anniversary of the estate, and very beautiful, this is from my favorite barrel here, right here. I'm not sure if you can see, it's all hand carved, the engravings. But it really tells the story of how winemaking was done back in the days. You look at the picture, you think, "Well, it's all pergola system, hand-picked.
We still hand pick, but we certainly don't crush the grapes and bring crushed grapes with oxes to the winery. So a lot has changed within those last, say 40 years. But it's just a beautiful way of really preserving history and showing what winemaking was like back in those days. For the largest barrel, so 180 hectoliters, and it dates back to 1903, so we still use it. It's mainly being used for Schiava, which is our indigenous grape variety that we plant and produce.
And now we go deeper down. The distributors that don't sell enough go in there.
So here we have the … cellar. So unfortunately, it's quite empty right now as we're just starting, as we're just preparing for the new vintage to arrive and hence the cellar, you'll see it empty right now. Generally, it's filled up with barrels. Any idea what we used to have in here before? You can see the ties, the beautiful glass ties. Any idea what was in here prior to these barrels here? These are old concrete tanks that went up until the [inaudible 00:06:20]. Can you see the up here on the ceiling? So they were fixed up there. So very old concrete tanks, all different concrete tanks that you see here and that were needed at the time because a lot of quantity was being produced. So when my mom started, she didn't need that much quantity, but she needed much more space for her barrels.
But just imagine even when the room is full of barrels, we would not even fill one of those tanks just to get an idea of how much wine we used to store in here. And hence, these concrete tanks have been empty for a long time. And these tiles were the inside of these concrete tanks. So when my mom needed more space, we decided to cut those tanks out, and only then we realized that these were so nicely preserved that we decided to keep them to really show the transition away from the quantity all the way to quality.
Nowadays, Alto Adige is one of the smallest regions within Italy. So we contribute less than 1% to the total Italian wine production, but yet we're considered among the most highly qualified region.
If you even look at wine awards and scores that Alto Adige gets, we really get a lot of awards and there's this beautiful chart showing awards compared to acres, and Alto Adige is always number one, because we are so little but known for our high quality. And certainly, discussed back also to my mother, who was really one of the pioneers in the high quality revolution that our whole region went through. This is a small panel, so you can see how deep and old these cellars are. So the deepest cellar is the next one, and that goes down about 10 meters below ground.
These are brand new. I still call it brand new, 2015 fermentation cellar. The idea when building this new fermentation cellar was really to continue the very delicate work that we apply in the... Sorry, we're in the middle of vintage.
So to really continue the very delicate work that we do in the vineyards, also bring that minimal intervention idea also in the cellar. So it's a completely gravity driven cellar. Grapes arrive on top and they constantly gently fall down until they get to the fermentation tanks. It's a cellar that gives us a lot of flexibility working the different vineyards and varieties differently. So on some varieties we want to experiment and play around with say whole bunches, whole berries, or slightly crushed ones. And then, as we've seen at the very beginning, we have several quality controls prior to that the grapes gets into the fermentation tanks.
So the first one is the quality control that we do within the vineyards because all of our grapes are being handpicked, all of them. Then we have two quality controls that go automatically, and the fourth one is on the selection table. So basically, four quality controls prior to that the grapes get into the fermentation tanks. All gravity driven, and it's small fermentation tanks of only 42 hectoliters. So we're really able to keep the small parcels separate until the very end, and then only we decide on how we're going to do the final blends.
And as you can see, all the cellars that we've just visited, they're all connected, all underground. So even where I'm standing here, that's also down here, there is a cellar. As I said, the deepest cellar that we have is about 10 meters below ground, which obviously is great so we don't have to use too much energy for cooling because everything is at a pretty much stable temperature all year round.
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FTC Compliance: I currently work for Cutting Edge Selections which represents Elena Walch in Ohio and Kentucky, but this blog and podcast are completely separate from that business relationship.