J. Hofstaetter

About Winery and Wines

Visitors to the headquarters and winery of the Josef Hofstätter estate find themselves in the main square of a bustling large village with the municipal hall, bars and the village church. The winery and offices are accommodated in a grand 16th century edifice, originally built for the Austrian Imperial post coaches and it also housed the ‘Schwarzer Adler’ inn belonging to Martin Foradori’s great aunt. Josef Hofstätter made his first wines in the inn’s cellars. His nephew Konrad Oberhofer and wife Luise took over the estate in 1942 and it was he who recognised the potential inherent in vineyards. He was the very first in South Tyrol to keep separate the grapes harvested in individual sites and name the resulting wines after the respective vineyards. Konrad Oberhofer’s daughter Sieglinde married Paolo Foradori in 1959. Paolo comes from an old-established family of winegrowers in the Adige Valley and owned vineyards in superb locations on the eastern side of the valley opposite Tramin. Since then these vineyards have been administered together with those on the Tramin side of the valley in the family company’s headquarters which still bears the name of the estate’s founder, Josef Hofstätter.

The Josef Hofstätter wine estate has produced and labelled the single-vineyard wines “Barthenau Vigna S. Urbano” (Pinot Noir) and “Barthenau Vigna S. Michele” (Pinot Blanc) ever since 1987. Paolo Foradori, the father of the current vintner, introduced these two wines from Pinot varieties to the market because they offered superb expression of two extraordinary vineyard parcels located in the Mazon community. These two wines, which were regional pioneers at the end of the 1980s, are now internationally established and demanded. The Mazon plateau located above the village of Neumarkt is particularly renowned for its Pinot sites. A further Pinot Noir from the Hofstätter wine assortment grows here: the “Riserva Mazon”. The Hofstätter’s famous Gewürztraminer is sourced from historic vineyards on the west side of the valley above the village of Tramin on the Söll slope: the “Kolbenhof” parcels of the Kolbenhof farmstead and the “Rechenthaler Schlossleiten” a parcel near the castle of the same name. The Hofstätter Estate owns yet another outstanding vineyard at the foot of the Söll Mountain called “Steinraffler”. This parcel is an ideal home for the autochthon grape variety Lagrein. The “Vigna” classification will also be used on the labels of these single-vineyard wines (the Kolbenhof, Rechtenthaler Schlossleiten, and the Steinraffler) in the future.