Traminer

2024 Author: Jasmine Walkman | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 08:29

Traminer (Gewürztraminer), also known as Gewürztraminer and Pink Traminer is a white wine grape variety that originates from the region of Tyrol (Austria) and South Tyrol (Italy). It gets its name from the village of Tramin, which is located in South Tyrol. Traminer has long been a well-known variety that has retained some of its primitive characteristics over the years. It is valued mainly for its aroma and because it is a specially created variety, it has never been planted in large quantities.

Apart from Austria and Italy, Traminer is also distributed in Croatia, Germany, France, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Romania, USA, Ukraine, Hungary, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada and others. In Australia, the variety has long been well known, but only by 1983 the areas planted with it reached 800 hectares. In Bulgaria the planted areas with traminer with limited and are located mainly in the northeastern parts of the country.

In general, over the last 50 years, the fashion in wine has slightly turned its back on the oriental aromas of Traminer and today the market value of the variety can be defined as symbolic. However, this does not apply to Alsace, where the variety is classified as noble, but it is specifically about gewürztraminer, as well as unique soils and stylistics of wine production.

Traminer features

Traminer is a less fragrant and lighter-colored predecessor of the Gewürztraminer, which, as we mentioned, takes its name from the village of Tramin in Italy. In different countries, traminer is often used as a synonym for gewürztraminer.

Gewürztraminer has a reddish color of the grapes and gives extremely aromatic, spicy and heavy white wines. Many young tasters say that it is the first and even the only variety that they are able to recognize unmistakably.

The emergence of the world-famous variety is interesting. The original variety is traminer, which is similar to gewürztraminer, but has light green grapes and is not as fragrant. Traminer is highly susceptible to mutations, and Gewürztraminer is the name for one such mutant form with a reddish color - Musque.

The Traminer variety is not the easiest - neither in the vineyards, nor in the cellars and not even in the cups. Reaching a high alcohol content is not a problem, but the level of acidity can be dangerously low at times, resulting in heavy and clumsy wines with overt bitterness.

The traminer is a disease-resistant variety, but when grown in cool areas. When the climate is hot, the traminer is more susceptible to various diseases and develops much more slowly. In cool areas, the leaves of the bunches are large and very rough. The bunches are small and compact, with a very short stalk, and the buds located close to each other make picking by hand difficult.

The grapes are small and elliptical, and in some cases both large and small grains can be seen in one bunch. They have a deep pink color when grown in cooler areas.

Guilt traminerproduced from vineyards in hot climates can not be distinguished by special qualities.

Traminer serving

Traminer has a dense and powerful body, as well as an exotic aroma that very quickly saturates the senses. This white wine is not easy to combine with food, but there are still a few basic combinations. Fruits are extremely suitable for this wine, especially oranges and tropical fruits such as mango, pineapple and papaya.

When it comes to spices, it is good to emphasize ginger, curry, cinnamon or cloves. Another possible combination for this wine are smoked cheeses. The best for this wine are smoked mozzarella and gouda.

The pretentious traminer combines most successfully with smoked, salty and sweet foods. Combination with sour dishes is unacceptable, as well as that with delicately prepared birds and seafood, because the wine will take over the dish.

Mandatory condition for serving traminer is the wine to be well chilled. It is safe to conclude that there is no middle ground in the traminer - its aromas are straining the senses, and its difficult combination with food pushes to two extremes - or hatred or love at first sight.