The name "Thurnhof" means 'close to a tower' and was first documented in 1175. It was situated beneath the castle 'Weinegg' and was subject to the Lords of Weinegg.
The troops of Meinhard II, Count of Tyrol besieged the castle for 13 weeks and reduced it to rubble. The Thurnhof estate was subsequently owned by the church and run by Bavarian monks, who were perhaps the first to appreciate its superb potential to produce premium wines.
Recently the Vigilius chapel, once the castle chapel, has been restored and the restoration work revealed a 14th century fresco cycle. It pictures Weinegg castle with Thurnhof at the foot of the hill. The picture (as shown left) became the inspiration for the Thurnhof labels.
Since 1850 the estate has been owned by the family Berger-Mumelter. Today Hans and Andreas Berger work hard in the steep vineyards to produce high quality wines.
Thurnhof ist a small wine estate comprising 3.5 hectares (8,64 acres) of vineyards located on the south-facing slopes of the Virgl hill to the south-east of Bolzano.
The warm climate of the Bolzano valley basin, with high temperatures in summer and autumn and plenty of sunshine enable even the most late-ripening grape varieties to produce perfectly mature fruit on a regular basis. The soils are porous, consisting of moraine debris and supply the vines with ample nourishment and water.
Growth is naturally of medium vigour and well balanced. We are firmly convinced that concentrated wines can only be produced by low yieldings vines, whereby yields are restricted by short pruning, thinning out the grapes in summer and through time consuming work controlling excess foliage and shoots.
In the winery we combine state-of-the-art technology with taditional manual methods aimed at preserving all the natural aromas, flavours and other substances which have accumulated in the grapes in order to express them in the finished wine. The resulting wines are exploding with fruit and varietal character, held together by formidable structure.
Associazione vignaioli sudtirolesi - Südtiroler Qualitäts Weinhöfe. Nine ambitious South Tyrolean wine producers united 12 years ago to establish the quality concept 'Südtiroler Weinhöfe' (South Tyrolean Wine Estates). The estates are almost exclusively run by the owners who work the vineyards and make the wines themselves. In the meantime all have become established as producers of superlative quality wines who share the same attitude towards quality and their work is verifiable all the way from the vine to the bottled product. These enthusiastic, confident individualists meet regularly to exchange ideas and experiences relating to cultivation and winemaking and appear united at wine fairs and international tastings.
The grapes for this wine are growing in to very different sites, a warm vineyard in Bozen at 300 m above sea level, and a cool vineyard located on Ritten, at 800 m above sea level.
No oak aging, bottled in April 2007