Starting the 2020 wine year off with a Chinese white wine.

2017 Chateau Changyu Moser XV Cabernet Sauvignon

Blanc de Noir 

Chateau Changyu Moser XV which opened in 2013 and cost 70 million dollars to build is a joint venture between the long-established Government funded winery Changyu and one of Austria’s leading winemakers Lenz Moser.

Lenz Mozer is the fifteenth generation of his family to make wine, the family winery was founded in Austria in 1892 but was sold in the 1980’s to a multinational company.  As part of the deal Moser stayed on to oversee the winemaking and before he knew it 15 years had passed.   Needing a change, he went on to run Robert Mondavi’s European operation for eight years, before setting up LaurenZ his own Austrian winery, with two business partners.  At that time, 15 years ago he was world renowned as a white winemaker and was known as Mr. Gruner Veltliner.

In 2010 following a trip to China to sell Austrian wine, he fell in love with the place and before he knew it, was working in partnership with Chateau Changyu.  He does not own any of the business but rather works with them as their winemaker.  2019 is his fifth vintage with Changyu who have 80,000 mu of vineyards in Yinchaun.

My first tasting of a Lenz Moser wine took place in Dublin 24 years earlier.  In 1995 at an Austrian wine event, I met Lenz Moser the fourteenth, who invited me to sample a white Cabernet Sauvignon his son had made.  Now this was a very rare wine and there was only one vintage of it.  The wine came about by accident, it was a very wet vintage and at the end of it the Cabernet Sauvignon grapes were covered in botrytis and the skins were totally rotten and had virtually no colour.  Moser decided that rather than let the juice go to waste he would vinify it as a white wine and that year produced 100,000 bottles of white Cabernet Sauvignon.  The wine was released and it all sold out.  It was sheer coincidence that I happened upon the wine and in conversation he was delighted that I remembered it.

Fast-forward 20 years and here in China where white wine is not really main-stream, Moser decided “I’m Austrian I need a white wine”, so  he decided to de-juice directly from the crusher some of those ripe Cabernet Sauvignon grapes, and the result was a superb white wine with a lovely fresh acidity.  The wine has not only become a success in China, but its export sales are pretty healthy too.  Approximately 10% of the wineries production is exported to 35 countries and key markets in Europe include Germany and the UK.  He produces 200,000 bottles of the white cabernet and sells 120 bottles of it a month in London’s top restaurants including Hedonism and Sexy Fish.  In China too the wine has become extremely popular and has really helped to put Chateau Changyu Moser on the map.

This is the famous white Cabernet; it has lovely floral notes on the nose with hints of exotic fruits on the palate backed by a fresh acidity.  It is fermented in stainless steel and has no wood at all.  This is the only wine of its kind in the world and  is  the pouring wine in in Westbury Hotel and the Shelbourne hotel where it is selling very well by the glass.

Movies & Booze Friday 3rd January,2020