Nals Margreid showcases seven Nama vintages at Merano WineFestival

Nals Margreid used the 35th Merano WineFestival to present a vertical tasting of seven vintages of Nama, the Alto Adige winery’s top Chardonnay, as it sought to show how the wine has changed over time and how its production style has become more focused.

The winery said on Friday, November 6, in Nalles, in Italy’s South Tyrol region, that the tasting centered on Nama vintages from 2016, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023. The event was built around a masterclass led by Cristina Mercuri, a Master of Wine and founder of Mercuri Wine Club, who guided participants through the lineup.

Nama now is produced as a 100% Chardonnay, but that was not the case in its earlier years. According to the winery, the 2016 release was made from 85% Chardonnay, 9% Pinot Bianco and 6% Sauvignon, while the 2018 vintage was 90% Chardonnay, 7% Pinot Bianco and 3% Sauvignon. From the 2019 vintage onward, Nama has been made entirely from Chardonnay.

That change is central to the winery’s effort to define Nama as a signature wine rather than simply another label in its portfolio. Nals Margreid said the project was developed to express the character of its vineyards in Alto Adige through a single Chardonnay with the structure to age over time.

The tasting also highlighted how the wine is made. Nals Margreid said each vintage begins with a selective hand harvest. Fermentation and aging then take place for 18 months in small oak barrels. After blending, the wine rests in stainless steel tanks until bottling, for 12 months in the case of the 2016 wine and 9 months for the later vintages, followed by another year of bottle aging.

Those production details matter because the winery is trying to position Nama not only as a regional Chardonnay, but as a wine built for longevity. A vertical tasting, in which several years of the same wine are tasted side by side, is commonly used to show how a wine responds to different growing seasons and how it develops with age. By choosing seven vintages that span the period before and after the switch to 100% Chardonnay, Nals Margreid put that evolution at the center of its presentation.

Winemaker Harald Schraffl, whom the winery described as the driving force behind the wine’s development, said the tasting was intended to show how time shapes Nama’s identity. “Nama was born from the desire to give voice to the mountains and to the depth of Alto Adige’s soils,” Schraffl said in a statement. “Rediscovering it across seven vintages lets us see how time reveals its elegance and identity.”

Sales Director Gottfried Pollinger said the event was also meant to open the winery’s work to a broader audience of trade professionals, wine enthusiasts and industry experts attending the festival. He said the vertical tasting was designed to share the winery’s long-term approach in both the vineyard and the cellar.

Nals Margreid is based in Alto Adige, a northern Italian wine region known for white wines made in cool-climate, high-altitude sites. The winery said Nama is intended to reflect that mountain environment and the local soils of Nalles, in the Adige Valley. By emphasizing grape selection, vineyard origin and long cellar aging, it is presenting the wine as a case study in how regional identity and technical winemaking decisions can intersect in a premium white wine.

The festival setting gave the winery a platform to reach an audience already focused on top-end wines. Merano WineFestival, now in its 35th edition, is one of Italy’s best-known wine events and regularly draws producers, buyers, journalists and collectors. For Nals Margreid, that made it a natural venue for a tasting meant to frame Nama as a wine with a clear stylistic path and the ability to mature across vintages.

The masterclass format also allowed the winery to underline a point that can be harder to convey through a single bottle release: consistency. By pouring vintages from 2016 through 2023, it showed both the impact of annual variation and the continuity of its broader production approach. The early blend-based vintages and the later 100% Chardonnay versions offered a direct comparison of how the project has narrowed its focus.

Nals Margreid described Nama as one of its benchmark wines and said the label represents a balance between technical precision and territorial identity. In practical terms, that means a wine shaped by extended aging, careful selection and a gradual refinement of style, with Chardonnay now carrying the full expression of the project.

The winery did not announce changes in production volume or distribution alongside the tasting, and it did not release pricing details in its statement. Its focus instead was on the vertical presentation itself and on reinforcing Nama’s role within the estate’s range through a public comparison of vintages stretching from 2016 to 2023.