WTN: Kobatl

A local shop brought in a selection of wines from Kobatl, a very small producer in the southeastern corner of Steiermark in Austria, close to the Slovenian border. I bought a six-pack. This is a Kobatl 2021 Waldstück, a varietal Bronner. (Yes, I contemplated titling this TN "Yul be sorry," but that sounded more negative than the wine merits!) Bronner is a grape I've never had before, described online as being similar to Pinot Blanc, which I often avoid because I associate it with a more overt and sickly-sweet florality than I prefer. I don't get any of that here: instead, this wine is lightly aromatic, middle-weight, richer than its 12% abv would lead you to expect, and interestingly suspended between the tropical and the austere. Somehow it makes me think both of Sauvignon Blanc -- from Alto Adige rather than NZ or CA, let's say -- and a little of a dry Riesling. (Sorry, I should have given David a trigger warning.) The finish is just barely shy of bone-dry. Very good with food, and really interesting and intriguing. At this price point ($38) I'm not likely to be stocking up, but this was a fun introduction to a region I'm not familiar with, and it has tons of personality. I was glad to have a chance to try it. (I have a couple more to try from the same producer, which are so-called "PiWi" wines, made from relatively recent hybrids bred for resistance to fungus.)

[David M. Bueker]

Bronner y aur stomp

...described online as being similar to Pinot Blanc, which I often avoid because I associate it with a more overt and sickly-sweet florality than I prefer. I don't get any of that here...

Curious where you got those associations? Something from North America?

In my experience, Pinot Blanc in France/Italy/Germany/Austria tends towards the more neutral side of things, which seems like the general direction of the wine you had.

My memory says Alsace, but this was a long time ago.

Just for fun I pulled out my oldest wine notebooks to see what I could find. There’s a Trimbach Pinot Blanc that I noted as floral, and a Weinbach too, and a Pierre Sparr “One” where I did the same and ascribed the florality to the PB and Gewürz in the blend, for whatever reason (did someone tell me that or was I guessing?). But I liked those wines, or so my notes say. There’s also a Roncus Pinot Bianco from Friuli that I found floral and flabby and didn’t much like, maybe that was it. My only North American PB in the early years appears to have been a Greata Okanagan had at lunch with Bill Spohn, which I found good but muted (which suggests that, by then, I might have formed some odd expectations of Pinot Blanc?).

All I can say is that these were the years when I was still just figuring out how to taste and write, and learning what I liked, and in which my benchmarks were largely Californian. And, I’d say, in which I was probably still drawn to wine that stood out for its overtness (of whatever kind) rather than its subtlety. So, one possibility: I had some early Alsatian Pinot Blancs that seemed floral to me (perhaps because I didn’t have a more refined vocabulary), and which might also have been relatively big and rich whites by European standards (I was also drinking a lot of Alsatian Gewürz at the time, which I rarely do now), and I enjoyed them, but later came to remember them negatively as my palate changed; or perhaps I had one later example and found I didn’t like it anymore. In any case, we’re talking about something like four or five bottles consumed in my late 20s or early 30s, so I claim absolutely zero expertise about what Pinot Blanc is supposed to taste like!

But thanks for the trip down memory lane. These notebooks are a hoot. (First entry is 1997 Chateau de la Chaize Brouilly, which I described as an “unusually complex” Beaujolais, which of course means “by comparison with the warm sale-bin Nouveau I had at a grad school party a year after it was bottled,” but as you know, grad students can be pretty good at affecting a tone of expertise in areas where they know next to nothing.)

David: [deep bows of submission while retreating slowly from the throne]

But thanks for the trip down memory lane. These notebooks are a hoot. (First entry is 1997 Chateau de la Chaize Brouilly, which I described as an “unusually complex” Beaujolais, which of course means “by comparison with the warm sale-bin Nouveau I had at a grad school party a year after it was bottled,” but as you know, grad students can be pretty good at affecting a tone of expertise in areas where they know next to nothing.)

Yes, it can be entertaining/humbling to read one's old notes, or see them in these wine board search engines. I try to keep that in mind whenever my instinct is to get irritated by a 'youngster' on a wine board...

[David M. Bueker]

David: [deep bows of submission while retreating slowly from the throne]

Nah. My brain just has more useless crap in it.