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In the heart of Tramin, the Alto Adige village that gives Gewürztraminer its name, Tenuta J. Hofstätter has been a quiet pace-setter for South Tyrolean wine since 1907. Five generations of the Foradori Hofstätter family work single vineyards on both sides of the Adige Valley, with sister estates in Trentino and Germany's Saar Valley. The cellar on Piazza Municipio is the same one Josef and Maria Hofstätter founded as a blacksmith and an innkeeper, now matched by an Enoteca that pours Pinot Nero Vigna S. Urbano alongside the dry Gewürztraminer that put Tramin on the world map.
Trentino-South Tyrol
Wines for this winery are still being curated. Check back as the UK retailer selection expands.
Bookable experiences, curated by our editors. External booking where marked.
Drop-in tasting at the estate's wine shop on Piazza Municipio, with the full Hofstätter range available to taste and to take home. Open Monday to Friday morning and afternoon and Saturday mornings; closed on Sunday and public holidays.
EnquireBooked guided tour of the historic Tramin cellar with a flight of estate wines, including the single-vineyard Pinot Nero and Gewürztraminer. A walk through the Gewürztraminer show vineyard is available alongside the cellar visit.
Book this experienceDrop-in tasting at the estate's wine shop on Piazza Municipio, with the full Hofstätter range available to taste and to take home. Open Monday to Friday morning and afternoon and Saturday mornings; closed on Sunday and public holidays.
EnquireThe estate sits on Piazza Municipio in Tramin, a Termeno hamlet whose Latinised name is the etymological root of Gewürztraminer. Josef and Maria Hofstätter founded the winery here in 1907, a blacksmith and an innkeeper who chose to bottle and sell wine under their own name at a time when South Tyrolean production was still mostly traded in barrel. That decision set the family's working principle: keep the cellar in the village, keep the wines tied to where they grew.
The estate's broader influence on Italian wine comes through Paolo Foradori, who married into the family in 1959 and led the winery from the 1980s. In 1987 he printed Vigna S. Urbano on the label of a single-vineyard Pinot Nero from the Mazon plateau on the eastern side of the Adige Valley. It was the first time any Alto Adige producer had used Vigna as a formal classification, and it kicked off the region's now-familiar single-vineyard logic. Mazon, with its 250-million-year-old Werfen Formation bedrock and cool downslope evening winds, has since become one of Italy's recognised homes for Pinot Nero. The Barthenau Vigna S. Urbano remains the cellar's flagship red.
The estate's white identity rests above the village in the hamlet of Söll, where dolomitic limestone, volcanic porphyry and glacial sandstone meet on a sun-cooled slope below Mount Roen. Gewürztraminer from these terraces shows the dry, spice-driven, mineral style that Paolo Foradori was instrumental in popularising at a time when the grape was still mostly thought of as a sweet wine. Konrad Oberhofer, the second-generation winemaker, had laid earlier groundwork by vinifying a single-origin Vernatsch from the Kolbenhof site in the 1950s, the first time any Alto Adige cellar had bottled a Schiava by named vineyard.
Today Martin and Beatrix Foradori Hofstätter run the estate, with the next generation Niklas and Emma already involved. The family has extended the single-vineyard idea beyond Alto Adige: Maso Michei in Trentino's Piccole Dolomiti above Ala, where Pinot Nero, Pinot Bianco, Sauvignon and Chardonnay ripen up to 850 metres, and the Dr. Fischer estate in Germany's Saar Valley, where Riesling comes from the steep slate of Ockfener Bockstein and Filzener Steinberger. The Tramin cellar still vinifies parcel by parcel, ageing wines in classic large oak, modern concrete vats, terracotta amphorae and stainless steel on lees, with an optical sorting system over the press.
The Enoteca J. Hofstätter on Piazza Municipio is the visiting face of the estate. The wine shop pours and sells the full range Monday to Friday and on Saturday mornings, with guided cellar tours and a walk through the estate's Gewürztraminer show vineyard available by appointment. It is one of the few addresses in South Tyrol where you can taste a flight of single-vineyard Pinot Nero from the same producer alongside a single-vineyard Gewürztraminer.
Editorially verified by ItalianWines.co.uk.
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Plate I · TRENTINO-SOUTH TYROL
Tastings
Tours
Accommodation
Walk-ins welcome 
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