(Manfred Klimek / WELT am SONNTAG / Photo: Klimek / animated pic: runwayml)
Roland Velich talks about wine as if it were geopolitics. That is unsettling. But Velich, 63 years old and a winegrower in Großhöflein, a municipality just south of Eisenstadt, the capital of the Austrian Burgenland – and in fact world-famous in the wine world for the magnificent Blaufränkisch wines from his Moric winery – is not someone who is satisfied with national borders or designations of origin when thinking about wine and winegrowing. For him, the real work begins with the question of what origin actually means and whether it can still be reconciled with today’s national borders. “Our historical context is not Austria, but Hungary,” says Velich. In saying this, he is expressing something true, although it does not necessarily make him popular in the Alpine republic.
The Burgenland, where Velich comes from, is a young construct: it has only been part of Austria since 1921, having been western Hungary for centuries before that. A region without an established identity under its present name. A space that constantly has to tell its story anew. Velich does exactly that. And he does it with friendly radicalism and a quiet voice that demands calm in the room.
His term for this winegrowing region is Pannonia. A large region stretching across borders: from the Burgenland through Hungary to parts of Slovakia and Slovenia. Bound together not by the national politics of countries that are very different today, but by climate, geology and cultural history. “When you stand on the slopes of Tokaj or at the Leitha Mountains or on the Spitzerberg in the Carnuntum region,” says Velich, “you feel it: this is the same landscape.”
That is more than a poetic assertion. It is a working programme. It is from this way of thinking that Velich’s projects in Hungary emerge – above all “Hidden Treasures”. A deliberately English name for a complex approach. Together with Hungarian winegrowers in Tokaj, Somló and on Lake Balaton, Velich seeks to uncover what he understands as the core of origin: grape variety, soil, climate – without stylistic excess. The method is as simple as it is still radical: precise work in the vineyard, minimal intervention in the cellar, spontaneous fermentation, little sulphur. “We want to understand what is there. And that is only possible if you allow it.”
Hidden Treasures is not a project in the way project leaders understand projects. It is a process. Velich contributes experience and a clear sensitivity to origin, while the local partners contribute their knowledge of the sites. The fact that new styles emerge from this is part of the idea. Furmint is at the centre of it – for Velich, one of Europe’s great grape varieties. Together with Blaufränkisch, it forms the foundation of a Pannonian identity for him: two varieties that do not merely illustrate origin, but have carried it within them for what feels like eternity.
Velich’s thinking is directed against a wine world that for decades has looked to models far removed from its regions: Bordeaux, Burgundy, international stylistic norms. “We copied for a hundred years,” he says: “Often well, sometimes very well – but rarely independently.” The price: a loss of self-understanding. Velich is trying to reverse this process. Not through new fashions or with the help of new media, but by drawing on what has long been there – precision in winemaking.
That this approach to winegrowing is having an impact is particularly visible among younger winegrowers. A generation that seeks substance more than popular recognition. “The greatest compliment is when they take it up,” says Velich. “Then you know it will continue.”
In the end, Velich says, his work is an attempt to make a great Central European region legible again. Not as a narrative in the usual marketing sense, but as a cultural space. For some, not only in winegrowing, that is overbearing. But making friends was never Velich’s concern. And that is, in fact, very un-Austrian.