Alois Lageder

Among the most important private wineries in South Tyrol, Alois Lageder is today the emblem of how mature the wine production of this region can be. Standard bearer and convinced practitioner of biodynamics, he brings together a tradition devoted to the exaltation of the raw material, often working with single-variety products and promoting an “organoleptic philosophy” oriented towards pleasure and ease of drinking, rather than muscles and structure.
A family history, that of the Lageder, began in 1823 and which since 1934 has laid its solid foundations in Magrè, on the Wine Route (Margreid), through the purchase of the historic Löwengang estate. Here the family began to bring the grapes from the various vineyards owned and started the conferment by third-party winemakers.
Several generations of “Alois” have succeeded over the years with the last, Alois IV, protagonist of the estate’s rise to the great wine stages since the seventies of the last century, introducing quality and innovation both in the vineyard and in the cellar. Among the first to apply biodynamics to viticulture.
It is likely that the territorial context played a decisive role in embracing the Steinerian philosophy, with vineyards located on plateaus or steep alpine slopes where plants and animals have always played a decisive role, either for the traditions of the territory, or to make up for it, above all in the past, the shortage of agricultural technology.
Although respect for the natural cycle is at the center of Lageder’s project and philosophy, innovation and experimentation in the cellar and in the vineyard are today inseparable characteristics of the way of making wine in Magrè, with a view to looking at the market but also and above all, to fully understand the evolution of nature and how a wine producer must adapt to it.
In the heart of the Lageder winery, years of agronomic and oenological studies lead to understand how to maximize the final product coming from a given territory by acting on certain variables, even breaking ones, experimenting with the introduction of allochthonous vines in the mountains, trying to make wine using stalks and bunches in contact with the must or by assembling cuvée of still wines from several thousandths aged in cask.
This and more behind Alois Lageder: a producer who already amazes with excellent wines and who, at the hands of the current generation led by Clemens, will reach new and ambitious goals in full compliance with family traditions and South Tyrolean territoriality.