Wine of the Week! 11/20/23

Cantina Kaltern Kellerei Kaltern Schiava

Normally $14.99 / Now on Sale for $12.96
100% Schiava

Up in the northeastern corner of Alpine Italy, two provinces make up one autonomous region with many names.

The whole area is the southern part of a region that stretched from northeastern Italy into western Austria, a region the Austrians called the Tyrol. Our two province area was first designated by Charlemagne, taken over by the Austro-Hungarian Empire, grabbed by Napoleon, ceded to Austria, treatied over to Italy after WWI, and then finally left to run its own affairs in the 1970s.

The southern province is mostly Italian in language and culture. Its main city is Trento, and it’s commonly known as “Trentino.” The northern province … well … the northern province was significantly Germanized in the Middle Ages, and, even today, 30% of the population speaks German as their first language. Because of the area’s history, the northern province has its traditional German name Südtirol (South Tyrol) as well its more recent Italian name Alto Adige (Upper Adige) since it is traversed by the upper part of the north-south running Adige River. Mussolini took the name from Napoleon — both autocrats wanting to erase the German heritage of the province.

Thus, today the whole two province area is known as the Trentino - Südtirol/Alto Adige region. It is in the Südtirol/Alto-Adige province (seven miles southwest of main city Bolzano/Bozen) that we find Cantina Kaltern.

Located in the Caldaro/Kaltern region, marked by the province’s largest lake — Lake Caldaro/Kaltern — Cantina Kaltern is a winemaking collective made up of 650 wine growing members and formed from the merger of five different kelleri (cellars). The oldest, Kellerei Kaltern was founded in 1900. The majority of the families grow on less than one hectare of land and make their living from day jobs, relegating winemaking to their free time and sharing one agronomist and oenologist between them.

Schiava was once the Südtirol/Alto Adige region’s most planted grape – with 60% of total vineyard area – until Pinot Grigio and Chardonnay began to supplant it. That’s too bad, because the light, crisp, and juicy red wines this local grape makes are fun to drink and pair well with a wide range of foods. Cantina Kaltern / Kellerei Kaltern’s Schiava is fresh and bright with a vibrant berry fruit skating across a calm bed of acidic tannin like a wind-surfer cruising across Lake Kaltern. Have this wine cool as if you’ve just taken it out of your cellar or if it and you have been sitting outside, gazing at the mountains on a brisk, fall, Südtirolean day.