Medal shower for wines from Il Sogno by Rudi Längauer
The wines from Il Sogno by Rudi Längauer were awarded 3 x gold and 4 x silver at the AWC Vienna 2023!
Styrian roofer as winemaker in Piedmont – how does that work?
Il SOGNO – the dream. The former master roofer Rudi Längauer from Styria fulfilled this with his boutique winery in Monferrato in 2015.
After he gave up his proverbial roofing job, he completed a year in a viticulture school in early retirement and trained as an organic soil technician at Bioforschung Austria, because he wanted to work organically. He and his wife searched for five years in Austria and Italy for a suitable place for his dream and finally found it in 2012 in Monferrato, the slightly different part of Piedmont.
It is the region of the slow food movement, the Barbera, the Moscato and the Freisa grape – an old indigenous grape variety that is only available in Piedmont.
After another year and a half of planning and overcoming the corresponding bureaucratic hurdles, construction of his new winery began in June 2014 and was completed at the end of 2015.
At the beginning he only had about one hectare of vineyard with 50% Barbera and 50% Freisa – for practice, as he says.
Since he wants to make cuvées, he planted an additional one and a half hectares in 2015 with Barbera, Merlot and Syrah, as well as some Cortese (Piedmontese white wine variety).
His first wine harvest in 2014 was vinified in a friend’s cantina and the wine was only filled into barriques in his own cellar in 2015.
Yes, his wines mature in barriques for two to three years and are then assembled into great cuvées that are causing a stir in the industry.
He ferments with his own yeasts from his vineyard and experiments with oak barrels made from French, American and Slovenian oak with different toasting temperatures in order to perfect his cuvées according to his ideas, in addition to the flavors typical of the variety and the influence of the terroir.
Since the 2018 vintage, his wines have been certified organic, as the first three years of a winery before certification are considered a transition phase.
The 2018 vintage is also the youngest vintage that he offers for sale, as his wines mature in barriques for two to three years, are then cuvéed and bottled, where they are stored for another two years before being sold for the first time.
Since the 2018 vintage, he has also been offering 1,200 bottles of his pure Barberas (stored in barriques for 40 months), as well as the Cortese, aged in barriques for one year, along with two cuvées.
Istooha Piedmontese expression for astonishment and surprise, is the name of his cuvée, which is assembled from the Barbera, Freisa, Merlot and Syrah grape varieties after 2 years of storage in barriques and has a slightly different composition every year.
His name is Super Piedmontese Four for three (1200 bottles) and is a cuvée from the best barrel of each of the four grape varieties, which is assembled after two years in barriques and then stored in the barrels for a third year before being bottled, where it matures for another two years.
By the way, you can also spend a vacation at his winery. Two junior suites, each with 50 m2 for two adults and a 40 m2 pool, invite you to relax. In order not to disturb the peace and quiet, pets are not permitted.
For those interested in wine, Rudi Längauer offers a small “wine seminar” in which you can learn a lot about organic wine cultivation and aging as well as taste wines from different barriques in the cellar to find out what flavors the different oak barrels influence the wine.
Questions & Contact:
Reinhold Längauer
rrl@gmx.net
Tel: +4369918236820
www.il-sogno.at