Franz Haas

Franz Haas is in Montagna, or Montan if you are speaking German, in the province of Bolzano in Alto Adige. The winery was founded in 1880 and has passed down through eight generations to the first-born of the family, each of whom carries the same name. The family has been producing wine for seven of those generations.

The recent history is worth knowing because it explains the wines. Franz Haas VI ran the business until 1986, having as a seventeen-year-old gone to law against an uncle to protect his father's inheritance, and having built the winery to look deliberately like a stable so as not to draw attention to it. He sold most of what he made in bulk to other South Tyrolean producers. His son took over and turned the estate into a bottler under its own name, and today Franz Haas VIII, known to everyone as Franz junior, has been in the business since 2010, looking after the European and export markets. Maria Luisa Manna came in full time in 1990. The team has gone from three people that year to nearly thirty.

The vineyards are not one block. There are many small plots spread across neighbouring municipalities, running from 200 metres up to 1,150 metres, managed since 2000 by Klaus. In 1999, reading the first signs of climate change, the family started renting land at altitude and began planting there in 2000; some of those sites are now among the highest vineyards in South Tyrol. Their argument for going up the mountain is specific rather than romantic: more aroma, longer life, more structure, more acidity, more salinity. The Pinot Nero Pònkler, planted at 800 metres in a spot surrounded by meadow and woodland, is the wine that makes the case, and the first vintage was 2010.

The vineyards are fed only with organic material. They are also not tidy, and the estate says so openly: the grass between the rows is allowed to grow long, on the grounds that flowers and insects matter more than a manicured look. That is not the same as certified organic.

Pinot Nero is the obsession. Franz has been making it for more than thirty years, and rather than making one a year he has run trials on clone after clone; the count of individual Pinot Neros vinified stands at 592. There are three Pinot Neros in the range as a result, alongside Müller Thurgau, Pinot Grigio, Pinot Bianco, Gewürztraminer, Moscato Giallo, Sauvignon and Petit Manseng among the whites, a Pinot Nero rose, and reds from Schiava and Lagrein.

One last thing that people notice on the shelf. The labels were painted by Riccardo Schweizer, born in 1925 in Mezzano in the Primiero valley, an Italian painter, sculptor, photographer, designer and architect who worked alongside Picasso, Chagall, Cocteau, Paul Éluard and Le Corbusier. Maria Luisa Manna gave them to Franz for luck. The first one used was on the Pinot Nero Schweizer, first vintage 1987, released in 1990.