FORESTIS Elevates Fine Dining with Homemade Drinks at YERA

The Fine Dining Restaurant at the South Tyrolean Hideaway FORESTIS Serves Its Own Drinks to Accompany the Menu

Hannes Unterberger (28) has been bar manager at the Hideaway FORESTIS since 2023. He is one of a group of young, creative bartenders who are boldly breaking new ground when it comes to inventing new cocktails and other drinks. With the opening of the new restaurant YERA at the beginning of summer, Hannes Unterberger has now immersed himself in a completely different world. With their idea of a restaurant in the mountains, the owners of FORESTIS, Teresa and Stefan Hinteregger, are once again setting new standards and surprising FORESTIS guests with unique culinary experience.

In the forest restaurant YERA, chef Roland Lamprecht celebrates his forest cuisine in an extraordinary way. Hannes Unterberger plays a key role in this, as he creates all the drinks that accompany Roland Lamprecht’s dishes to ensure they complement the food. It’s a symbiosis between drink and dish that has never been seen before. In consultation with the head chef, Hannes Unterberger uses some of the same ingredients in his drinks as Lamprecht uses in his dishes. He serves a drink containing ground elder, a wild plant related to parsley and dill and known to most people as a weed rather than a medicinal and culinary plant, with risotto containing ground elder, and he also uses wood sorrel in the drink served with char and wood sorrel.

Guests at YERA are treated to a completely new culinary experience, thanks in part to the harmony between the food and drinks. Many of the ingredients were already used by the Celts, who once settled in this area of South Tyrol, as seasonings, food and remedies. Hannes Unterberger serves 12 drinks with Roland Lamprecht’s 14 dishes, some of which are non-alcoholic but never exceed an alcohol content of 5%. A completely alcohol-free option is also available, of course.

Hannes Unterberger does everything himself: “I had to break new ground for YERA. We make the vinegars ourselves, which we then use for the dishes and drinks, our sauerkraut is homemade, lacto-fermented beetroot for a drink, as well as home-fermented fruit wines and kombuchas, i.e. fermented teas made from local products, because we don’t grow black tea here. We only work with local products, currently from the light season, based on the Celtic calendar. We made the fruit wines ourselves, also in preparation for winter, because the fruits are ripe now.”

There is a wide selection of fruit wines: plum wine, fig wine, rhubarb wine, cherry wine, Swiss stone pine and spruce wine.

“Wine is the basis of a drink. Think of it this way: cocktails always have a spirit as their base, such as whisky, rum or gin, but since we don’t use any spirits at YERA, I need a base, which I can make myself in the form of fermented products, resulting in a fruit wine. This is nothing more than alcoholic fermentation. For completely alcohol-free drinks, I use kombucha, lacto-fermented products, homemade syrups and juices as a base, ” explains Hannes Unterberger.

A special drink is served to welcome guests. “Our guests realize right from the start that this evening will be different, that we are taking them into a new world of aromas and flavours”, says head chef and host Roland Lamprecht. “At YERA, nothing is standard, from the architecture to the food and drinks to the tableware, which was made especially for us by local artisans.”

Even the cutlery at YERA is different than expected. And so, the evening begins with a welcome drink by Hannes Unterberger that whets the appetite for what is to come: a freshly whipped pine sorbet with fresh pine syrup and verjus (pressed unripe grapes) instead of citrus juice. Infused with mountain chamomile kombucha. The conversion of sugar into acid produces a slight carbonation, which adds freshness and sets the tone for the evening.

During the three-hour dinner at YERA, guests are constantly surprised, and the harmony between food and drink makes the dining experience complete and, above all, digestible. The kitchen and bar have experimented a lot to get where they are now. The concept of the cave restaurant at FORESTIS is coherent and an experience that is further enhanced by the fact that guests are asked to hand in their mobile phones so that they can enjoy the ceremony at YERA with all their senses.