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I had one bottle and loved it.
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I’ve still got a bottle of the ’14, somehow hung on to (actually was my first post on the Community about this time two years ago - @Inbar, I will let you know one day how it is!). I want to try it with a ’14 Hans Nittnaus Leitherberg brought back from Vienna, but would much prefer to do so with a like minded friend as Mrs CR (actually Austrian) is not that keen on reds. So this will have to wait until lockdown ends.
Whilst the above is not that helpful to your question, Profavi, I can say that I’ve recently had a Blaufränkich by Weninger, a Ried Kirchholz, which was a 2015 and rather lovely. Definitely ready. Weninger is a bit further south, below Neusiedlersee in Middle Burgenland, and also grows & produces in Hungary, near Sopron, so the same place as Peter Wetzer, if on a somewhat bigger scale.
Sometime in late summer 2019 I also got 9 bottles of Nittnaus’ Kalk & Schiefer Blaufränkich 2015, from Lea & Sandeman (near to me in west London) - happily they were on sale at 33% off and thus on a par with prices in Austria. This is a step down from the Leitherberg & not so fine on the tongue, but v good nonetheless. Don’t think I’d have bought at L&S’s full UK price, though. The box of 6 came with a leaflet giving the window as 2016-26. I haven’t had one since last summer, so will be interested to try again at some point soon. I’ve three left, so will space them out to see what another year or so between each does. When buying in the Burgenland Vinothek in Vienna I was told to keep the better Blaufränkiches and Pannobiles (blends from 9 producers in the Neusiedlersee area) for a good 5 years at least.
So, if you haven’t already, do try one of the 2015’s and let us know what you think.
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Anyone had the Wetzer Leithaberg yet? Because my bottle doesn’t appear to be a Wetzer wine at all. The label is the same as on the TWS website but on closer examination it is made by someone called ‘Rouschal & Janotka’ with no reference to Wetzer at all. It’s also pretty off the wall - perhaps it needs a bit of air but the first sip tastes like a mixture of tamarind paste and balsamic vinegar.
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How strange!
A bit of late-night Googling comes up with this:
Seems like a duo making wines in Burgenland too. Same label as what the Wetzer had been advertised on TWS site, though…? 
Is it beginning to resemble wine now?
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did you mean @horsleym
I cannot be sure, but the previous name of the company Weinbau Rouschal Janotka Gnbr previously was Weinbau Rouschal Wetzer Janotka Gnbr and a 2013 vintage Blaufrankisch appears under the names Wetzer and Rouschal in an Austrian wine merchant’s site.
I suspect that Mr. Wetzer is still involved in the winemaking if not the company, given this is the only Austrian wine from the line-up offered.
Also the Leitheberg DAC website does not list Wetzer as a winemaker.
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Helpful thanks. The fruit became more prominent with air and I will see how it fares after a day in the eto. Perhaps these are just very pronounced varietal characteristics which I wasn’t expecting but for me the Braunstein was a much more balanced wine.
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Simon has written about Wetzer in the past in his blog and I expect he knows exactly how the relationship works.
I’m sure the buyers would also be able to clarify.
My assumption is that Peter is the winemaker but that this bottling is managed away from his garage winery and so is also bottled and labelled accordingly but that’s just a guess.
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For anyone who is interested there’s a new Austrian Blaufränkisch which I put on the website today. It’s from Gerhard Pittnauer in Burgenland and is 2009. It’s fully mature and I think will appeal especially to lovers of funky old northern Rhone. Its very niche but I hope you enjoy it! One of those wines that keeps on evolving for the best part of a week after opening.
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The question I’ve often asked and never got a reply, is I wonder why don’t the Austrians call it Lemberger ? Yet it is called Lemberger in Germany, Pennsylvania etc. And Lemberg is in Austria where it (supposedly) comes from…
answers on a postcard…
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Good question. No idea! Will find out one day and when I do I’ll let you know.
Quite a good Wikipedia article on the grapes origins. Quite complicated as is often the case!
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Thanks for the share. So it looks like people named it after where they got it from, whether Austria, Franconia or modern day Slovenia.
JR Wine Grapes places its origin in Austria; Styria and / or Maissau (which have towns named Lemberg (SE) and Limburg (NE) respectively; and not Slovenia, which is the reference I’d always borne in mind. As ever in these things it’s been lost in the mists of time I guess, but I’ve always regarded Blaufränkisch as an Austrian varietal.
A bit like the myth that Gewurtztraminer comes from Termeno, Italy, (It doesn’t !) despite the large road sign proudly claiming that on the entrance to the town. Oh, and the Greeks claim that Aglianico is theirs not Italy.
And there’s still Californians out there actually working and giving public tours in wineries stating brazenly that Zinf is a native American grape !!
All good fun.
They were there first. 
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Not according , again, to JR wine grapes which must be the definitive reference ?
Hoping I’m not breaching copyright or anything but…
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I meant in Italy, before the Romans… no doubt others have been there even before.
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Indeed and the wider point is that when these varietals werefirst being cultivated by successive cross pollination, long before phylloxera, our modern national boundaries have no strict relevance; none the less I like to think of where the varietal was first raised and place it where a contemporaneously-defined nation is bounded. Where’s Riesling from ? Who knows - The Franco-German border around the middle Rhine has chopped and changed so much over the centuries it’s almost a moot question !
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Also the notion of Italy is relatively young, too, 1870s?
The Greeks are still there in Southern Italy:
As are Albanian speakers, not that people from Albania can easily understand their version of Albanian:
The Puglian dialect in particular has quite a lot of Greek-isms in it as well. Of course the south of Italy was Enotria for the Greeks, when Rome was an upstart republic and before.
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