MCF Rare Wine Ltd.

True Austrian Magic: Tscheppe

When a wine comes along that truly evolves your perceptions of what wine is capable of, it's very exciting.

What often goes hand-in-hand with such an experience, though, is tremendously low availability.

Andreas and Elisabeth Tscheppe, located in the southern part of Styria in Austria, are crafting some unbelieveably good biodynamic whites.

These wines occupy that perfect spot on the spectrum where descriptors like 'natural', 'adventurous', 'mind-bending' and (yes) 'crowd pleasing' all intersect.

That's not an easy thing to do.  The vast majority of wines are either straight-forward/widely palatable or adventurous/a little more niche.

Then you have these two wines, that somehow manage to simultaneously identify themselves loudly and clearly as Sauvignon Blanc or Chardonnay, but at the same time completely blow up your opinions/prejudices of the two grapes.

I've had quite a few of these Austrian 'mad scientist' takes on Sauv Blanc and Chardonnay in the past (you may recall names like Werlitsch or Rebenhof), but these are, in my opinion, on a completely different level.  

Okay, I'll stop being hyperbolic and talk about today's two specific wines.

The Sauvignon Blanc 'Blue Dragon' (the wines are identified by the critters on their labels) is one of the more unique takes on this grape that I've ever had.  On the nose, you're hit with some wildly intense and expressive tropical/floral notes, but at the back end, that classic grassy/mineral thing arrives to remind you that you're dealing with Sauvignon.  The same holds true on the palate -- it's very intensely textured and seems to go in a hundred directions at once, but ends with a tightly-packed floral/mineral feel.   

The intense/hundred-directions-at-once thing also applies to the Chardonnay 'Salamander'.  Again, it's at once a completely alien wine and also somehow obviously Chardonnay.  It's much rounder and weightier on both the nose and palate, with intense fruits and spices, but the citrus/mineral notes on the end redeem its Chardonnay street-cred.

Both wines had Chris and I shaking our heads in disbelief as we kept getting lost in the glass with each whiff.

This is wild, but beautiful stuff.

...and the labels are really pretty too...

Here's the one piece of bad news - like many of these amazing 'micro' producers in Europe, there is so little of these wines that make it to the US (and thus, so little to go around) that I might have to limit order sizes, depending on demand.

Send me what you want, and I'll do my best.

TSCHEPPE

Sauvignon Blanc 'Blue Dragonfly' 2013 $39/btl

Chardonnay 'Salamander' 2013 $42/btl

To order, please reply to this message or call 212.255.8870.

Matt Franco

MCF Rare Wine, Ltd
249 West 13th Street
NYC 10011
mcf@mcf-rarewine.com
212.255.8870
www.mcf-rarewine.com