Blütezeit No. 2 Watch Review: Viennese Brand With ‘100% European’ Production

Today, I am introducing a watch from a newer Austrian watch brand based in Vienna, known as Blütezeit. Before talking about the Blütezeit No. 2 timepiece, I want to share some context about brands of this ilk. We exist in an interesting era for small and startup watchmakers. Often referred to as “independent brands” due to their autonomy (though much larger and more established watchmakers can easily be referred to as “independent”), many of these small brands represent an area in which a considerable amount of creative and economic energy is being spent. No matter how wild and weird the world of larger society continues to get, a number of people around the planet are attempting to make their creative and business dreams come true by launching a watch brand. Blütezeit is part of that crowd, and the focus on the brand (like that of others) was to create a novel timepiece to the exacting specifications of the company’s founder, Mr. Dieter Altenburger. The challenge for new brands like Blütezeit is the fact that the public rarely allows these companies to get away with very high retail prices from the outset. To charge the higher prices required for a brand to offer increasing novelty and complication, they must often start humbly in order to validate themselves to the community. Only over time, and repeated success, can most startup brands proceed to producing the watches and creations that founders perhaps dreamed about when first starting the brand. In other words, a brand’s first watch must be both impressive and basic. Watch brands take time to get into a rhythm with suppliers, customers, and their own work processes. While founders have a vision of what they ultimately want, rarely is the first product so impressive that it satisfies this goal. In this instance, Blütezeit’s watches are impressively refined and well-composed at launch. I can see a lot of future directions the brand can go in. While the watches are not traditionally low-priced (though they don’t feel overpriced), Blütezeit’s timepieces get so much “correct” right away that it is clear the founder is both meticulous and honed in his taste and understanding of the watch industry. “Blütezeit” as a term more or less translates into “the good old days.” This is a fitting label in an era when nostalgia isn’t just important in the luxury watch industry, but where most consumers are actively seeking the supposed ‘safety’ of past eras and obsolete thinking systems. This is where the watch industry easily succeeds in appealing to consumers, because what many watch brands produce is high-quality wearable escapism. You know, watches like they used to make in the “good ol’ days.” The most notable “good old days” feature of the Blutezeit No. 2 series (including this No. 2.1 model) is the use of an authentic machine-engraved guilloché dial produced by master artisan Jochen Benzinger in Germany. The Blutezeit No. 2.1 has a black-colored dial with barleycorn and fish-scale pattern decoration, but Blutezeit also appears to offer a Jochen Benzinger guilloché -machined, engraved dial in blue and also a dark red version, I believe. The dial is designed to look attractive, but there are also functional advantages to this type of engraved patterning. Where the No. 2.1 watch succeeds is in legibility, but using mostly old-school methods to achieve it. The beautiful blued steel hands and textured dial patterns we see from most historic watches were not used merely for cosmetic reasons. Most of those techniques were originally intended to reduce corrosion over time, help increase visual contrast, and to reduce obstructing light reflections. Even though the No. 2 is a beautiful dress watch, it is also as legible as most sport watches. How this outcome is achieved is a function of multiple things working together, not just the dial. For example, the hour markers and hands are designed so that they reflect light from multiple angles. The hour markers and hands are also properly sized, proportional, and painted with SuperLumiNova luminous material. The overall outcome of these various factors yields a dial that effectively (not distractingly) catches light from most angles to make use of available light to promote dial readability. This is a brilliant outcome for a first watch, and hardly an accident. Just to help legibility even more, Blutezeit opts for sapphire crystals that have nine layers of anti-reflective (AR) coating per side. That is more AR than a Rolex, and far more focus on dial clarity than on most watches produced by big brands. I credit the Austrian/German interest in optics and clarity for the application of such details to a dress watch (as you usually see legibility only prioritized in Swiss, for instance, sport watches). The dial’s time-only layout has central hands for the hours and minutes, along with a subsidiary second dial at the 6 o’clock position on the face. Subsidiary seconds dials tend to make small dials feel a bit larger, but are also a bit more ‘classic feeling’ on modern watches than when a central seconds hand is used. Before I move on to talk about the No. 2.1 watch case and the movement inside of the watch, I want to mention one more detail on the dial that is the “D|A|CH” origination label. This stands for “Deutschland (Germany), Austria, and Switzerland (CH). These are the principal German-speaking zones of Europe and where (according to Blutezeit) 95% of the components in its watches come from. The other 5% are the hands, which the Austrian watch brand says come from France. More so, Blutezeit claims that the No. 2 and their other watches are 100% European, with all components coming from that region of the world. This is beyond “Swiss Made,” which is a label that allows for a large percentage of the parts to come from anywhere else in the world. The same goes for “Made in Germany’ in a lot of watches. Thus, to offer a more precise and nuanced product origination claim, Blutezeit designed to use the “D|A|CH” term. To anyone who doesn’t know what that means, then it just looks like the dial has some variation on the term “dash.” In polished and brushed stainless steel, the Blutezeit No 2.1 watch case is 37mm wide, about 7mm thick, and it has a modest, roughly 46mm long lug-to-lug distance. The case is water resistant to 30 meters and has another sapphire crystal on the caseback as an exhibition window. Even though the watch seems narrow on paper, the cushion shape allows it to wear a bit more broadly and thus not feel petite. The case also uses standard 20mm wide straps, which are common for larger watches as well. Thus, you have a watch that is actually very slim and easy to wear, but that doesn’t really come across as a little watch. The No. 2’s case geometry and overall finishing are very good. I can tell that Blutezeit put in a lot of R&D into making sure the case shape was ideally beautiful and wearable. The goal isn’t to be the thinnest watch, but rather to have a comfortable, dressier experience with the added benefit of a slim case. I find wearing a watch like this very attractive on a regular basis. Note that the strap pictured with the watch is not the same strap that normally comes on the No. 2. The standard strap that comes paired with the Blutezeit No. 2 is a black alligator strap. Sending alligator or other animal skin straps to the United States is complicated due to the CITES law. Therefore, this particular Blutezeit No. 2.1 watch has a slightly different strap, but equally as nice as what typically comes with the brand’s timepieces. Blutezeit didn’t have a lot of options for movements given its goals, but I think it found a good solution with a relatively uncommon manual-wind caliber produced by Swiss La Joux-Perret. The objective for the watch was likely a time-only, thin mechanical movement with a classic-looking visual architecture. The solution was the La Joux-Perret caliber LJP7380. This manually wound movement operates at 3Hz with a long 90 hours of power reserve (nearly four days). The last time aBlogtoWatch covered a timepiece with this movement, it was in the Ralph Lauren Polo Vintage 67. The LJP7380 has also been featured in watches produced by Sartory-Billard (who also uses the LJP G101 movements in many of their watches). The LJP7380 lacks a hacking feature to stop the seconds when you set the time, but otherwise, I think it is a solid choice for any timepiece that opts to be thin, manual, and pretty. While the Blutezeit No. 2 timepiece is not inexpensive, it is less expensive than the other watches I mentioned that feature the same movement. To put things in perspective, I want to compare the Blutezeit No. 2.1 watch with another timepiece that came out just a few days before I sat down to finish writing this watch review. That is the Ming x JN Shapiro 37.06 Lightning watch (aBlogtoWatch hands-on). While the two watches don’t immediately look the same, they are born of the same mentality. Both have modern, albeit manually wound mechanical mechanisms, and both have hand-crafted guilloché machine-engraved faces. I think it is interesting to compare the values and philosophy of both watches because I think it represents a growing sub-genre of decorated daily wear enthusiast dress-style timepieces. To be competitive, Blutezeit offers a five-year warranty on the No. 2 and its other watches. I really do enjoy the wearing experience as well as the style of these watches. The Blütezeit No. 2.1 is a handsome and easy-to-read classic watch with collectors and enthusiasts in mind. Based in Vienna and founded by a seasoned collector, the brand starts life at a gallop with a highly competent timepiece that feels refined as well as original. Price for the Blütezeit No. 2.1 watch is 5,000 Euros. Learn more at the Blütezeit website.