🍷 J. Hofstätter

J. Hofstätter is a family winery on the town square of Tramin (Termeno), in southern South Tyrol. According to the family, Josef Hofstätter, a blacksmith, and Maria Hofstätter, an innkeeper, founded it in 1907. The second generation, Konrad and Luise Oberhofer, began bottling wine instead of selling it in barrels; the third, Paolo Foradori and Sieglinde Oberhofer, in 1987 put the word Vigna on a label for the first time in the region, for the single-vineyard Barthenau Vigna S. Urbano Pinot Nero. Since 1992 Martin Foradori Hofstätter has led the winery with his wife Beatrix; their children Niklas and Emma are the fifth generation.

According to the family, its vineyards lie on both sides of the Adige valley, at Tramin, Mazon and Buchholz, planted with Pinot Noir, Gewürztraminer, Pinot Blanc, Lagrein and Sauvignon Blanc. It also owns the Maso Michei estate in Trentino and vineyards on the Mosel and Saar in Germany (Dr. Fischer).

According to the family, its named single vineyards include Vigna Oberkerschbaum (Sauvignon) and Vigna Kolbenhof and Vigna Castel Rechtenthal (Gewürztraminer), and the Maso Michei estate stands at 823 metres in the Piccole Dolomiti of Trentino. The wines are aged in both wooden barrels and concrete vats. Under the Alto Adige production specification, a wine labelled with a grape name needs vineyards made up of at least 85% of that variety, grown in the viticultural territory of listed communes of the province of Bolzano, Termeno among them, and new plantings need at least 3,300 vines per hectare.

Alto Adige (Südtirol) is a protected designation of origin (PDO) listed in the EU register eAmbrosia. Under EU law a PDO wine must be made entirely from grapes grown in the defined area and be produced there.

Why it matters to you. The same producer also bottles wines from Trentino and Germany; Alto Adige DOC on the label tells you the wine comes from South Tyrol. The WHO reminds: there is no safe level of alcohol.