Anita & Hans Nittnaus Anita Red 2018 (750ml)

Price: $17.99

Qty:   Add to Cart

Quantity in Stock: 1

Producer	Anita & Hans Nittnaus
Country	Austria
Region	Burgenland
Varietal	Zweigelt
Vintage	2018
Sku	54773
Size	750ml

 

Mostly Zweigelt with splashes of Blaufränkisch and Sankt Laurent, “Anita” shows off Nittnaus’ knack for producing lip-smackingly delicious reds. Soaring acidity lets the spice-drenched red and black fruits dance on the palate, and the wine—with only 15 milligrams per liter of added sulfur—bristles with energy. There is just enough structure here to keep the wine from feeling simple, but it stays out of the way of the fruit-and-spice main event.

Nittnaus’ cellar practices serve to highlight the energetic and lovely character of their abundantly healthy fruit: they employ only spontaneous fermentations; and, for aging, they favor 500-liter Stockinger casks, whose tight-grained, low-toast, low-impact construction allows for maximal expressiveness and facilitates ultra-modest sulfur additions.

Burgenland is Austria’s easternmost wine region, situated south of Niederösterreich and north of Steiermark, and bordering Hungary along its entire eastern flank. Its 28% share of Austria’s vineyard area produces the country’s best and most respected red wines, from vineyards whose proximity to Hungary’s warm Pannonian plains ensures proper ripening for the indigenous Blaufränkisch and Zweigelt. The northern sector of Burgenland is dominated by Lake Neusiedl (or Neusiedlersee), Europe’s largest steppe lake, which straddles the Austria-Hungary border, and the Nittnaus family has resided in the town of Gols, on Neusiedlersee’s eastern edge, since 1684.

Today, third-generation Hans Nittnaus and his wife Anita helm the winery his grandfather Johann began in 1927. After taking over from his father in 1985, in the aftermath of the well-publicized diethylene glycol scandal which (despite being perpetrated by only a few large wineries) so damaged Austrian wine’s reputation abroad, Hans was resolutely determined to claw out some respect for the wines of his homeland. As so many across lesser-known winegrowing regions did in the 1980s, Hans chose Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot as his draft horses to ride toward international acclaim; however, within a few years he shifted focus to Blaufränkisch and Zweigelt—varieties whose deep sense of somewhere-ness more readily distinguish them from the pack.