Terry Theise Estate Selections. austria 2015

Transcription

1 Terry Theise Estate Selections austria 2015

2 Theise manifesto Beauty is more important than impact. Harmony is more important than intensity. The whole of any wine must always be more than the sum of its parts. Distinctiveness is more important than conventional prettiness. Soul is more important than anything, and soul is expressed as a trinity of family, soil and artisanality. Lots of wines, many of them good wines, let you taste the noise. But only the best let you taste the silence.

3 contents introduction 1 Wagram 31 The 2014 Vintage 3 Ecker 32 Highlights and Superlatives 4 Ott 35 Another Look at First Among Equals 4 Kremstal & Kamptal 37 When to Drink the Wines 5 Berger 38 A Note on My Use of the Word Urgestein 5 Nigl 40 The Questions of Organics 5 Bründlmayer 43 Austrian Red Wines 5 Schloss Gobelsburg 48 Hiedler 52 Styria 7 A Small Thought, A Large Gratefulness 54 Hirschmann 7 Hirsch 55 Leithaberg dac 8 Wachau 58 Prieler 8 Alzinger 59 Nikolaihof-Wachau 61 Neusiedlersee 11 Heidi Schröck 11 axberg 65 Sattler 14 Hans Reisetbauer 65 Südburgenland Wallner Reference 66 Krutzler 19 Glatzer 21 Weinviertel 24 Schwarzböck 25 H.u.M. Hofer 27 Setzer 29

4 introduction In the middle of the night I was woken up by lightning. It had been a clammy day and hadn t cooled off much, but it wasn t sultry and no storms were forecasted. But this was quite the light show, flashing almost without pause for several minutes. Since I was now full-awake I broke the rules and went to the window to watch the storm. The gust front blew in I heard it whoosh through the trees, stop when it passed over the Danube, and start again in Mautern, where my hotel was around the corner from Nikolaihof. The rain started sheeting down, a few small clatters of little hailstones, and then quickly in five minutes it stopped. So I went back to bed and listened to the consoling sound of retreating thunder, and enjoyed the ozone smell and the cool new breeze. The next morning at breakfast, there was news. The storm had only clipped Mautern, but at its boiling core it cast a 5-km swathe of golfball-sized hail, and over three thousand square kilometers were affected. Worst hit were the Kremstal along the river, and then up into the Wagram, and in these places not a vine had been spared; it was a wipe-out, 100% damage. This would affect Berger and Ott, whom I d see tomorrow, and also Ecker and Setzer, whom I d already seen. No one could remember a 2am hailstorm, let alone one of this destructive magnitude, let alone one that came out of nowhere. A grower, a farmer, anyone who depends upon the caprices of nature for a livelihood, learns to be stoic. But what I saw on the faces of my guys was numbness for their own losses, and sympathy for the poor battered vines, and their defenseless green shoots. Perhaps there d be a second growth. It could happen. It wouldn t be much, and it could never be as strong as the first shoots, and it would also be tardy and would require a picture-perfect late Fall to ripen the grapes. But, it could happen. These things always look worst right after they occur. Maybe. Less than a week later my gang and I were in Rust, where Heidi Schröck had ordered-in a mess of schnitzels, and where we (OK, I) pigged out on breaded cutlets and fried chicken as if there would be no more food ever again. When that little soiree broke up it was all beddie-bye in Rust; the outdoor restaurants were empty, no sound came from anyone s window and there were no lights but the street lamps and the stars. I walked around the town towards my hotel, groaning-full of food, enjoying the cool air and starry sky. The storks sat contentedly in their nests every house in Rust seems to have a stork s nest on its roof. It was quiet and the world was perfect. And then I heard a peeping, and then several peepings, and I couldn t fathom what critter was making that plaintive sound. Storks will lean their necks back and make a clattery sound with their beaks (for some reason connected to mating) but if they peeped or chirped or screeched, I d never heard it. So I stopped to watch. The bird I was observing reacted to each little peep by lowering its head, and then the peep would stop, and then it started again. Through my schnitzel-haze I sussed it; the peeps were coming from the baby storks because they were hungry, and the mother stork would lean her face down to feed the chick. Rust might be sleeping, but birds gotta eat. I sat and watched and felt very far away, in the middle of a different world. The storks are a totem creature for the people of Rust, and I love them without really knowing why. One morning I was almost eye level with a very glam bird who was tidying the exterior of her nest. It was one of those It has ever been thus instants, where you feel the tingle of nature going about its 2015 Austria > Introduction 1

5 business without concern for your shortass life. I d heard frogs when I turned out my lights the night before, and now I was spying on a busy stork, and all around me was a mellow antiquity, and man, it was Europe. Yet a few hours later I sat at dinner and ate a meal so modern and ethereal it could have easily been New York or Chicago or San Francisco. Austria is also simpler than Germany where wine is concerned. There s no identity crises here, and there s a whole lot fewer internal contradictions, ideological struggles and multiple identities, all the things that make Germany so, um, entertaining. So, what must you know? First, this was only a fitfully quality-oriented wine culture until the mid- 80s, hardly known abroad, and barely worth knowing. Too many of the wines were made as cheaper alternatives to sweet German wines, and the whole queasy thing reached its apogee when a scrum of scummy wine merchants were discovered to have used the active ingredient of anti-freeze in their wines, to make them seem richer and sweeter. This was a blessing in disguise, because it forced the wine culture to reinvent itself, which it did, aggressively and in amazingly short order. It is now a dry wine culture. It is now overwhelmingly a small-family estate wine culture. There are very few negoçiants left, and the small number of co-ops are among the best of their kind anywhere. To the extent sweet wines exist, they are almost always true dessert-wines. Austria is quite apart from Germany in meso-climate. It s more easterly and more southerly. It takes you 7-8 hours (if you re lucky with traffic) to drive from the Rheingau to the Wachau. As most Austrian vineyards lie in the wind and rain shadow of the Alps, the growers struggle with insufficient precipitation. Germany s climate is still maritime, but Austria s is continental. However, the dryness of climate in Austria allows for a large proportion of organic production, both in crops and grapes. Austria has the largest percentage of land in certified-organic production of any nation in the EU. Let s take Riesling, and compare apples to apples. Though it s only 4% of the vineyard plantings, Riesling produces a substantial majority of Austria s greatest white wines. They are nearly always bone dry. They are less fat than Alsatian wines have become, less sweet than (many) Alsatian wines have gotten, less earthy, yet more tensile and minerally. Compared directly with the good German Trockens, they have more body and juice, and they seem more generous. That said, there are tasters who prefer the cooler feel of the dry Germans, and who find Austrian Riesling too flamboyant. I myself don t have a preference; I like them both, each for its native virtues. But it s fair to say that dry German Riesling is all over the spectrum quality-wise, from brilliant terroir-wines to quite decent simpler wines to a still-distressingly-large number of yowling nasty wines. These you will not find in Austria. Riesling is destined to be dry here, and though you ll find dull or mediocre wines, you ll almost never find a shrill or biting one. Austria is of course a smaller wine country than Germany. It also has a feverishly thirsty domestic clientele, who are served by an activist wine press who compete against one another to be the first with the earliest reviews, thus everyone s ass is up for grabs, so if you don t make at least decent wine, you ll be exposed in a hurry. Thus the base-line of competence is markedly high in Austria. Austria s greatest contribution to the wine world is its native and signature grape variety, Grüner Veltliner. Most of you know it exists, yet there s a kind of stink to it, as in something that used to be trendy. Think of the way you re discovering all these hitherto-unknown cool things from all over the place, and how much fun it is. That was Grüner Veltliner in the late 90s and early aughts. And you don t want to repeat what those guys did; you want to do new things. Got it, and sympathize. The problem is, what should have happened was to recognize GV as a classic, whereas what did (too often) happen was it got swept into the rubbish pile of the previously fashionable. You re not gonna like what I m about to say, but in the service of truth I have to say it. Not one single thing that s since been discovered, trumped, lionized, promulgated, put on wine lists and talked about with giddy delight, not ONE. DAMN. THING. has been nearly as excellent as Grüner Veltliner. Put any of them in my face, and I ll just keep annoying you; Jura? Love them, not as good as GV. Timorosso? Very cool and interesting, not as good as GV. Doesn t matter what you push upon me; you are ignoring much sweeter and lower-hanging fruit in order to clamber to the top of the tree and pluck inferior material. So I m asking you to look again. Taste seriously and see what your Dollars (or your boss s) are actually buying, and then really, please, do make the best case you can that there s better wine for the money than GV will give. I want to hear it; it will help me. If you re right, it will humble my sad smug ass, which anyone will tell you is a good thing. But I don t think you can. No one can. The marketing of this point can seem a little needy, and I suppose it is, because we ve been saying for twenty years that Grüner Veltliner ages fabulously, and ability to age is how we know to take a wine seriously, or so I ve been told. An august panel was convened one October in New York, to taste a bunch of mature GVs; Aldo Sohm was on it, David Schildknecht, Jancis Robinson, Willi Klinger, and for some reason, me. My guys at Skurnik staged another tasting in January, of Rieslings and GVs from the Kamptal going back to I thought the point was made, but I was already sold. The only way to know how the tasters felt is to see what they do, whether they decide to take GV seriously as opposed to ensuring the few token wines are duly stocked. Austria is also a markedly good producer of red wines, from three native varieties I ll describe in a few pages. These wines are not simple, but neither are they routinely grandiose and complex. They are wonderful medium-weight food-friendly fruit-driven wines. They are distinctive and individual. They get what wine s supposed to do at the table and in our lives. They re not afraid to be delicious. If you re someone who likes Foradori s basic Teroldego more than the Granato, your mind is ready for Austrian red. (And speaking of which: Lagrein? Love Lagrein! Blaufränkisch is better.) That s the salient material. Ancillary but still important; Austria makes important Pinot Blanc, makes very good but often too expensive Sauvignon Blanc, is the world s largest supplier of Gelber Muskateller, which is a great stupid miracle when it s good, and makes often-decent wines from commonly seen international sorts, few of which I offer here. We don t need them. Austria should be a major source for you. Too often it s just a niche or an afterthought. This is a wine culture unique in the world, building on the gravitas of centuries but grabbing the chance to reinvent itself from scratch in the late 80s. It s youthful and fresh yet rooted and deep. It manages a miraculous balancing act between being cosmopolitan and sophisticated yet making fiercely individual wine that s saturated with identity. Looking for Austria > Introduction

6 the good guys? These are the good guys. Please, support them generously. Theirs is still a wee little culture doing all the things we say we want, but somehow we ve relegated them to not-as-cool as whatever the wine du jour is this month. I mean, I want all those cool new wines in the world, I like discovery. But I also like perspective. To be entirely honest, I sometimes wonder whether these wines are actually too good for the larger audience I think they should have. A thing like that can sound elitist. Too good for the likes of you, Bucko. So go ahead and tag me. But if you do, I ll allow myself to observe that there are hundreds of wines on retail shelves and restaurant wine lists that are not as good as these wines and cost as much or more. Why, if you don t mind my asking? I submit that it s because there s an unacknowledged contempt toward anything with German words on the label, an underlying assumption that such wines can never be more than trivial and certainly aren t worth anything north of fifty Dollars. If I m right, then I m not an elitist; I m just a sad and puzzled idealist. Maybe I m wrong and it isn t contempt, but rather fear. I find it odd that people who are serenely competent in all other walks of wine, who don t mind when they mangle the French, Italian or Spanish languages, are suddenly reduced to stammering helplessness as soon as an umlaut appears. What is it about German that makes a person feel so abruptly incapable? Certainly the language isn t as euphonious as the romance languages, but that didn t stop the somm-glom from embracing Txakolina, and God help me, if you can say Sauvignon Blanc you can say Senftenberger Piri. * THE 2014 VINTAGE * Until late August it looked good, on schedule and plenty of it. Then it got rainy and clammy, and this was exactly the worst possible weather, and it didn t let up for weeks. It rained and rained, and when the sun came out it was steamy, and any grapes with thin skins and tight bunches were obliterated, even when growers had bunch-thinned. So if you had St Laurent or Pinot Noir in your vineyards kaput, a total loss. The basic question emerged, and it was similar to the one asked at the same time in Germany (rarely, as the two places don t align in growing conditions) do you pick now to spare the crop from more botrytis, mildew and other rots? The grapes aren t as ripe as you wish they d be, but a small clean wine may be preferable to a riper less clean one. Or do you wait, hoping the weather pattern shifts, trying to pick riper grapes even if you have to select like a demon and throw a lot away? The question was less urgent for Grüner Veltliner, because it was already ripening and its thicker skins would better manage the prevailing humidity. Riesling wasn t there yet. The ancillary varieties (Muscat, Sauvignon, Pinot Blanc, etc.) would have to fend for themselves. A recipe for a write-off, you may be thinking. Think again is a vintage of (mostly) modest-scale wines that are exceptionally good because they have structure and force. It was crucial to manage yields, and many growers who didn t thin during the summer had underripeness when the botrytis hit. It was also crucial to harvest fastidiously, selecting twice in the vineyard and again on belts and/or sorting tables in the press-house. It was the most expensive and protracted vintage in modern times. If you calculate total cost divided by the amount of useful wine you made, you probably will be losing money on A few tasters who saw the wines early, e.g., at Prowein or on private visits to Austria reported very high acids, but I can only assume these folks haven t 2015 Austria > Introduction 3

7 spent a lifetime tasting young German Riesling, because the 14 Austrians have acids somewhere between pussy-cat and cream-puff, though the growers were worried I d find the wines sour. Not a chance. Whereas most GrüVe in a normal year has acids in the g/l range, the 14s have g/l or so, hardly worth talking about, and very well buffered by abnormally robust extracts. To be sure, 2014 is a much better vintage for GrüVe than for Riesling, and when I evaluate the vintage I m thinking about GV above all. For Austria s most important grape, 2014 is a fine to excellent vintage for which no apology needs at all to be made. Rather the opposite: the growers ought to be stoked by the dynamism, torque and energy of (especially) their top wines, the ones that sometimes collapse under their own weight, the bruisers that exceed 14% alc in normal years, and which are absolutely bloody gorgeous in The small wines, the ones that typically show abut % alc are, let s say, modest but honest in 2014, giving between % alc and most important showing no flavors of underripeness or greenness, but are simply unassuming little winey-poos that are pleasurable and forgettable. In 2014, it is well worth trading up to the top wines, and cherishing their intense concentrated flavors mineral, herbs, mint, aloe. I m not looking for silver linings here; I really like this vintage for Grüner Veltliner, almost as much as I like Riesling is a mixed bag. I d say that large (by my mingy standards) wineries with substantial Riesling holdings were most at risk of losing the gamble of waiting to pick. The honorable exceptions are NIGL and BRUNDLMAYER, each of whom made several super-fine Rieslings and no gnarly ones. Interestingly it was the smaller wineries who only have a little Riesling who seem to have made curiously and markedly delicious Rieslings. I cannot account for the many excellent Gelber Muskatellers I tasted. By all logic these should have been unripe if they even existed at all. In fact many of them were dense and mineral, Muscat for Riesling lovers, and to my surprise I find 2014 better than 13 for this variety. Yup, I m saying Search out Muscats in I m glad to be able to endorse the best of this vintage, because it looked pretty doubtful going in, and it wasn t helped when the first grower I visited said it was a catastrophe, the worst vintage I ve ever had. So, like, sheesh it would be a long nine days. But I came home happy and relieved. At least from my place of remove from the actual work of the thing. At least two growers told me If we have another year like this one, I gotta consider a change of career or words to that effect. I show up in May in the full blooming giddy mess of Spring and I sit there and contemplate the aesthetics of the stuff in my glass. I didn t sweat the blood of the harvest. And then there s a vicious hailstorm. These people suffer, you know. Highlights And Superlatives The winery of the vintage is Bründlmayer by a hair over Schloss Gobelsburg. Taking the entire collections of each estate as a whole, including previous vintages, it s a dead heat between the two, as Gobelsburg has a marvelous trilogy of 2012 reds that stand as a high-water mark for the estate s red wines. But our heroes at Bründlmayer have really come on in the past few vintages. Whether this is due to a father-son synergy of Willi and Vincent, a friendly wish to challenge Gobelsburg, or just some harmonic convergence, I couldn t say. I know I got the charge you get when a wine estate is at the top of its game. And I have to wonder if I have ever tasted a greater young Austrian Riesling than Willi s 2013 Heiligenstein Alte Reben. Profound can t encompass the dignity, power and gravitas of that beautiful wine. The wine of the vintage is Gobelsburg s Grüner Veltliner Renner. Coming up close behind is Alzinger s Grüner Veltliner Steinertal Federspiel, and Ott s Grüner Veltliner Der Ott. The wine of the offering, irrespective of vintage, is clearly the aforementioned Bründlmayer 2013 Riesling Heiligenstein Alte Reben. But here we reach a delightful conundrum, because Gobelsburg s 2013 Grüner Veltliner Tradition may be the best-ever vintage for this most meaningful of wines. The best Muscat this year is the wonderful Nikolaihof, but only by a jot, as there were almost equally compelling examples from Ecker, Berger and Nigl. The best among the many low-end Grüner Veltliners this year is the remarkably fine HIRSCH #1. The great Rosé belongs to Hofer, whose Zweigelt soared above all its colleagues in The best weirdoes and sleepers include (in the order I tasted them): ECKER 2012 St Laurent NIKOLAIHOF 2012 Riesling Extra Brut (yes! Fizz!) NIGL 2010 Brut de Brut (addictive sparkler and priced to move) GLATZER 2014 Grüner Veltliner Dornenvogel SCHROCK 2014 Furmint ANOTHER LOOK AT 2013 A year isn t enough perspective to announce whether the vintage is great or whatever, but I have no reason to change my mind; 2013 is a candidate for greatness in Riesling, and an excellent vintage for GrüVe. It shows beautifully right now, and I know that because I can t keep my damn hands off it. Now that many of the 13 reds are arriving, any fears I may have harbored that it would be too slight have easily been allayed. It is a very pretty, slender and attractive vintage for red wines, driven by a lyrical fruit, and it will only disappoint you if all you crave is power. Speaking-of the best of the 2012s are also making the scene, and these are powerful wines, the best of which are capacious, deep, resplendent wines, among the greatest ever produced in Austria. There are also a fair number which appear to be brooding and dour but you won t see them here. I grabbed every GV and Riesling I could still find from 2013, and basically the smartest, I mean the SMARTEST thing you can do is, if it says 2013 and Austria (and if it s one of those two grapes) just buy the fucker, because a vintage like that comes along only once in years. First Among Equals Once again I will highlight special favorites by use of one, two and three pluses (+, ++, +++). Call it my subjective short-list. It has to do with a quality of being stunned by a wine, and it can happen with small wines or big ones; it has to do with quality of flavor as much as with rendering of flavor. One plus means something like one Michelin star. Pay particular attention to this wine. Try not to miss it. Two pluses is like two Michelin stars, getting close to as-good-as-it-gets now, no home should be without it. It s indispensable. Three pluses almost never appear, because these are the wines that go where you simply cannot imagine anything bet Austria > Introduction

8 ter. Like three Michelin stars. There are rarely more than a wine or two per year that reach this level, cause your intrepid taster has to be virtually flattened with ecstasy. There is sentiment to the effect that using any form of highlighting is invidious, since it damns the wines without plusses as also-rans. Obviously that s not the case, but I agree there s a danger whenever one establishes a hierarchy based on scores, even in such a primitive system as mine. But there s also a pragmatic consideration at play; you can t buy every wine in this offering, and my plusses try to answer the implied question What should I not miss no matter what? And of course you ll still pore through the prose for my many jokes and puns, and the Masonic messages I ve cannily embedded within it. I m also aware there can be political ramifications at play, and I ask you to believe I do my best to ignore them. A grower might feel slighted if he doesn t get enough plusses. A guy who luvved me for all the plusses I gave him last year might wonder what happened if he got fewer or none this year. The pressure s on and at the moment of tasting, I don t care. Nothing matters but the wine. When to Drink the Wines You can drink GrüVe either very young if you enjoy its primary fruit, or very old if you like mature flavors. GrüVe seems to age in a steady climb. Naturally the riper it is the longer it goes, but in general it doesn t start showing true tertiary flavors till it s about 12 years old. Even then it s just a patina. Around it starts tasting like grown-up mature wine but still not old. Wait a little longer. Riesling, amazingly, ages faster. In certain vintages it takes on the flavorknown-as petrol, which it later sheds. Great Austrian Riesling will certainly make old bones years for the best wines but all things being equal GrüVe tastes younger at every point along the way. So: young is always good. If you want mature overtones wait about ten years. If you want a completely mature wine, wait about twenty. Even more improbable; Pinot Blanc can make it to fifteen or even twenty years quite easily. If you want to wait, you ll end up with something recalling a somewhat rustic white Burgundy. Mr. Hiedler has shown me more than a few striking old masterpieces, but then, he has The Touch with this variety. A Note on My Use of the Word Urgestein I have tended to use this term as the Austrians do, to refer to a family of metamorphic soils based on primary rock. While it s a useful word, you should bear in mind Urgestein isn t a single soil but a general group of soils. There are important distinctions among it: some soils have more mica, silica, others are schistuous (fractured granite), still others contain more gneiss. Hirsch s twin-peaks of Gaisberg and Heiligenstain are both classed as Urgestein sites, yet they re quite different in flavor. The Questions of OrGANIcs First, I m not going to politicize this issue, because I don t grow grapes or make wine for a living, and thus it would be fatuous of me to preach to people who do, about living up to my precious standards. What I ll do instead is say what I see on the ground, and suggest what I hope will be useful positions. The consensus among serious growers is to go as far as prudence will allow toward organic growing. Few of them use chemical fertilizers, or pesticides or herbicides, but many of them either use or reserve the right to use fungicides. Nearly every grower I know (or with whom I ve discussed these issues) is mindful of the need for sustainability. Some of them just do their thing and answer only to their own conscience. Others belong to various organizations certifying and controlling what s called Integrated growing, wherein the allowable spraying compounds are detailed and enforced. There are two ways to look at this. One says these growers are just lazy or riskaverse and integrated growing is just a green-wash for something not much better than conventional/ chemical. I doubt many people who hold that opinion have ever had to support a family as winery proprietors, but their ferocity is at least well meant. The other opinion the one I myself hold is that any step in the right direction is to be encouraged, and it s very likely the world is more improved if most people are taking those steps than if only a few are, because when forced to choose between all or nothing, they choose nothing. The truly organic or biodynamic estates can choose whether to certify by various means, and most of them do. I have one certified-organic and two biodynamic estates in this assortment. The political issues around certification can be thorny, especially if one s a lone wolf by nature. But what s the alternative? If you won t certify, do you really have a right to the claim of organic or biodynamic? After all, anyone can talk whatever he pleases, but the ones who endure the paperwork and the politics ought to be the only ones with rights to the power of the organic brand. My position is to encourage the growers with whom I work to take whatever steps they can in an organic direction. I don t think it improves their wines in ways you can taste discretely, though conscientiousness in one thing often implies conscientiousness in all things. Most important, I don t subject my growers to any sort of purity test with only pass/fail as options. There are reasonable approaches other than mine, and I respect them, but this one works for me. AUSTRIAN RED WINES Well, they tried, and then bless them, they stopped. They wanted to show they could compete in the world of big oaky dull reds and so they planted the usual grapes and bought the usual barriques and made a few plausible wines. And then one day they woke up and realized they were far too eager to give the world a type of wine the world was already drowning in. They looked a little silly. The wines were paint-by-numbers. And so they looked around and asked the true, salient questions. What do we have? What unique thing can we contribute? How do we add to the sum of distinctive interesting wine in the world? Here is how those questions are being answered. Not have been answered, but are being answered, because this is a culture in motion, and one that learns each year. What seems to be true is, Austrian red wines straddle a line between warm and cool styles. They are rich and ripe most of them make 13.5% alc without chaptalization. Most are dark in color. Most have the physiological sweetness of fully ripe fruit. Most are glossy and polished. But most are fruit-driven, medium in weight and FOOD FRIENDLY. Partly by dint of geography and partly by choice of grape variety, these are structured wines that seldom carry the stewy heat of hot-climate reds. Finally, most use wood as a seasoning and a nuance, because they got bored with overtly woody wines that taste the same as everyone else s in the world Austria > Introduction 5

9 And most important, Austria s reds are delicious. There s that word again. I see tasters finding (or dreaming) all kinds of virtues in the hipster wine-of-the-week, whatever quirky little beast comes from some obscure place that gives people bragging rights for discovering something previously and often deservedly unknown. Because if we are really honest, we have to acknowledge that some wines are obscure for very good reasons; they aren t that good. We make this wine as it s been made for 1100 years, by passing the juice back over grape seeds that have been eaten and shit back out by a ferret, and while that may be an interesting story, it s probably a lousy glass of wine. With even a modicum of selectivity, which is where I come in, it is almost always a yummy, helpful, substantive and yet charming glass of wine from Austria. They re made from three native grape varieties that barely grow anywhere else. At least one of them offers all the angular quirks you could ever crave, but it won t insult your intelligence or your palate. Another is absurdly delicious. Yet another is entirely compelling and fiendishly hard to grow. Here they are. Blaufränkisch is the one with the highest up side, making nearly all of Austria s most important reds. The best of these are among the world s great red wines not, perhaps, the greatest, but certainly the great. That echelon is represented here by PRIELER S Goldberg and Marienthal single-vineyards, and by KRUTZLER S iconic Perwolff. Blaufränkisch is essentially the wine Sauvignon Blanc would be if it were red. It rarely has a lot of fruit but it seems to have every possible berry and cherry, and if you taste bilberry, juniper, huckleberry, blackberry, black raspberry, black cherry, regular old cherry, I won t argue. BF also seems to have every herb under the sun, and I mean under the sun, as it tastes as though the herbs were hot when you plucked them. If you re an imaginative type and you write weeds or garrigue you re also getting the signal. If you smell and taste cracked black peppercorns, you re in. BF will appeal to the lover of Cabernet Franc, and if you re a habitué of Old-World Malbec or Tannat, you re also in the ballpark. It also feints toward Cabernet Sauvignon though in Austria it is far more interesting. Its flavors are highly focused because it has the highest acidity of any important red wine as high as Champagne. When it s ripe enough it brings a lavish and satisfying juiciness to its precision and clarity, and for a wine as un-seductive as this one is, it gives a great keen pleasure and scratches an itch few other reds can reach. It is a vertical red, not opulent; nor does it murmur or soothe. It s exciting and dynamic. It is also sensitive to soil, and is a reciter-of-terroir in a way I think can only be equaled by Pinot Noir. (Curiously, certain BFs start to resemble certain Burgundies when they re about 6-9 years old.) BF has the widest quality spread of Austria s big-3 red grapes, reaching the greatest heights but also when it s poorly vinified or wasn t ripe enough giving gnarly unhappy wines that aren t very nice. But anyone who loves Riesling should be making a beeline for BF, and I am baffled by any curious wine nerd who looks past this variety in order to alight upon manifestly inferior stuff. (Jura reds? Really?) Sankt Laurent is Burgundy-plus. It resembles a Burgundy that was cut with 10-15% Mourvèdre (or in other words, pre-war Burgundy ), offering the sweet roundness of Pinot with the darker barkier flavors of southern Rhônes. The basic wine from SATTLER will show you the pure fruit with no wood at all. You say it the German way; it sounds like zonked cow rent. Though it resembles Pinot, it s not genetically related. But like Pinot, it is hard to grow; indeed a lot harder. It s a vineyard prima-donna that won t flower if it s the least bit miffed, and which gives a tight cluster of thin-skinned berries liable to rot, and so it needs a lot of canopy management and yield control and bunch thinning. No grower makes a lot, and the only reason anyone makes any is because it tastes amazing. When you get a good one it will cover you in hugs and kisses, and you will gloat inwardly at the money you saved over the Burgundy you were gonna buy. If you think along lines of smoky, blackened Burgundy, you ll know what to expect. Last there is Zweigelt, which is a 1933 crossing of BF and SL named after the man who created it. Zweigelt is both blessed and cursed by its insane attractiveness, and is sometimes relegated to beautiful-airhead status. If you skimmed the sweet top-notes off of Syrah, and left the earthy/animal stuff behind, you d have Zweigelt. Considered a workhorse grape, if it yields too generously you get a sweet-scented St Amour or Regnie sort of wine, but if you crop it too thin you get a kind of opacity. It s tempting to just render it thoughtlessly because it is so tempting, but I m seeing a lot of people asking Just how good can this variety be if we really probe into it and see what potential it has? I can show it to you in many idioms, from all-steel to full-on serious wine vinification, but what you can always expect is a wine that smells gorgeous and enticing, sometimes feinting toward its BF parent and other times toward its SL parent, and almost always growing rounder and more plummy with air. It seems to exist only to give joy, but many examples don t stop at joy, but offer several dimensions of dustiness and complexity, always staying fruity and seeming to always be hale. You could say Zweigelt is like Schiava, Blaufränkisch is like Lagrein and St. Laurent is like Corvino, if that helps. I ll throw in the umlauts for free. Below the echelon in which red wine is Earnestly Great, I need it to be delicious. It bores me when it affects the attributes of greatness (which usually means overextraction, overoaking and too much alcohol) and does not deliver. Just because you wear a muscle shirt don t mean you gots muscles. I am a great lover of tasty reds, which usually fall at or below 13% alc and which just seem to drain out of the bottle, you drink them so fast. For me, a red wine is truly great when it gladdens the senses and flatters the food. That s the baseline. You can add mystery and complexity and atmosphere, you can add length, power and concentration, but you reach a point where an excess of pleasure becomes a kind of soreness. There s a developing story that concerns the remarkable improvement of the red wines from regions once thought to be white-wine only. Maybe it s climate change. But after the whole French Paradox thing broke, lots of growers felt they had to make a token red wine or two, just so the customer wouldn t have to go elsewhere for them. Most of those wines were pretty anemic, and a few of them are still pretty clunky. But more and more of them are viable, attractive and very tasty beings. We don t sell them very much, because (I think) you prefer to spend your redwine Dollar on a grower who specializes in reds. Makes sense. But you re missing out on some very tasty numbers. Herewith a list of reds-from-whitewine growers, which I plead with you not to ignore: Hofer Ecker SCHLOSS Gobelsburg Berger Setzer Bründlmayer Austria > Introduction

10 hirschmann region / product Styria / Roasted Pumpkin Seed Oil It was on my first trip to Austria. In the achingly beautiful region of South Styria, I was sitting in a sweet little country restaurant waiting for my food to arrive. Bread was brought, dark and sweet, and then a little bowl of the most unctuous looking oil I d ever seen was placed before me, clearly for dunking, but this stuff looked serious, and I wasn t going to attempt it till I knew what it was. Assured by my companion that it wouldn t grow hair on my palms, I slipped a corner of bread into it and tasted. And my culinary life was forever changed. Since then everyone, without exception, who has visited Austria has come back raving about this food. It s like a sweet, sexy secret a few of us share. Once you taste it, you can barely imagine how you ever did without it. I wonder if there s another foodstuff in the world as littleknown and as intrinsically spectacular as this one. What It Tastes Like and How It s Used At its best, it tastes like an ethereal essence of the seed. It is dark, intense, viscous; a little goes a long way. In Austria it is used as a condiment; you dunk bread in it, drizzle it over salads, potatoes, eggs, mushrooms, even soups; you can use it in salad dressings (in which case you may cut it with extra-virgin olive oil, lest it become too dominant!); there are doubtless many other uses which I am too big a food clod to have gleaned. If you develop any hip ideas and don t mind sharing them attributed of course I d be glad to hear from you. THE FACTS: this oil is the product of a particular kind of pumpkin, smaller than ours, and green with yellow stripes rather than orange. The main factor in the quality of the oil is, not surprisingly, the QUALITY OF THE SEEDS THEMSELVES. Accordingly, they are hand-scooped out of the pumpkin at harvest time; it s quite picturesque to see the women sitting in the pumpkin patches at their work though the work is said to be arduous. Other Decisive FacTOrs FOr Quality Are: 1. Seeds of local origin. Imported seeds produce an inferior oil. 2. Hand-sorting. No machine can do this job as well as attentive human eyes and hands. 3. Hand-washing of the seeds. Machinewashed seeds, while technically clean, lose a fine silvery-green bloom that gives the oils its incomparable flavor. 4. Temperature of roasting. The lower the temperature, the nuttier the flavor. Higher temperatures give a more roasted taste. Too high gives a course, scorched flavor. 5. Relative gentleness or roughness of mashing. The seeds are mashed as they roast, and the more tender the mashing, the more polished the final flavor. To make a quick judgment on the quality of the oil, look at the color of the rim if you pour the oil into a shallow bowl. It should be virtually opaque at the center, but vivid green at the rim. If it s too brown, it was roasted too long. After roasting and mashing, the seeds are pressed and the oil emerges. And that s all. It cools off and gets bottled. And tastes miraculous. Storing and Handling The oils are natural products and therefore need attentive treatment. Store them in a cool place; if the oil is overheated it goes rancid. Guaranteed shelf-life if stored properly is twelve to eighteen months from bottling. Bottling dates are indicated on the label. The Assortment In the early days I tasted a wide variety of oils and selected the three millers whose oils I liked best. Typical winegeek, eh! I couldn t confine it to just one; oh no, there were too many interesting distinctions between them. Well, time passed by and I began to see the sustainable level of business the oils would bring. If we were in the fancy-food matrix we d be selling a ton of these oils (they really are that good and that unique) but we re wine merchants and we don t have the networks or contacts. So I m reducing the assortment to just one producer, my very favorite: HIRSCHMANN. Leo Hirschmann makes the La Tâche of pumpkin seed oil. It has amazing polish and complexity. BOTTle sizes The basic size is 500 ml. Liter bottles are also available, which might be useful for restaurants who d like to lower the perounce cost. Finally we offer 250ml bottles, ideal for retailers who d like to get the experimental impulse sale; the oil can be priced below $20 in the lil bottle. OAT-003 (12/250ml) OAT-007 (12/500ml) OAT-010 (6/1.0L) 2015 Austria > Styria / Hirschmann 7

11 Prieler region / sub region Leithaberg DAC / Schützen VINEYARD AREA 20 hectares ANNUAL PRODUCTION 8,000 cases TOP SITES AND SOIL TYPES Goldberg (slate) ; Seeberg, Sinner (limestone, mica schist) ; Ungerbergen (limestone with pebbles) ; Marienthal (limestone) GRAPE VARIETIES 30% Blaufränkish 15% Cabernet Sauvignon 14% Pinot Noir 10% Chardonnay 10% Merlot 10% Pinot Blanc 8% St. Laurent 3% Welschriesling Two pieces of news to relay; one is that the estate will be certified-organic as of vintage 2017, and two is that Georg has, I think, established himself entirely as a mature young vintner who has control of his wines. His 2014 whites benefited from the mineral density of this low-yield vintage, and the lower (but not low) alcohol suits them. But more important is the transformation in his top reds, which have become commanding and expressive out of the gate, and which now reward aging but do not demand it. For me Prieler is saliently a Blaufränkish estate, making an irresistible case for this wonderful variety. (They grow Pinot Noir, St Laurent, Merlot and Cabernet also, but these I think are ancillary.) I don t mean to diss the whites, especially the Pinot Blancs, which are among Austria s (and thus the world s) best, but BF is the biggest contributor to all that is noble and holy. Prieler s BF is rangy, touching on spurting fruit, smoke and pepper, moving toward a fine animal richness and reaching its pinnacle with a liquid-iron richness and minerality that makes you think of Pomerol Austria > Leithaberg DAC / Prieler

12 2014 Chardonnay Ried Sinner + 12/750ml AEP-107 ( Ried simply means vineyard.) This 14 is limpid, pebbly, with sweet-lees and pure varietal fruit. Tasted from both the ubiquitous (and incomprehensibly trendy) Zalto Denkart and the old reliable Riedel tulip, it was absurdly better from the Riedel, with wonderful grain and hay and apple and a fine powdery mineral. The best face of 2014 is Just. Like. This Pinot Blanc Ried Seeberg 12/750ml AEP-105 Fantastic dicht and kick; sweet fruit to the mid-palate and then the 14 extracts ride a wave of vigorous acidity into a white-tea leesy-stony finish. Animated, squirming flavor in three acts and the hero gets the girl Pinot Blanc Leithaberg + 6/750ml AEP-111 The original mandate from the growers association who first used the name Leithaberg (subsequently corrupted as a dreaded DAC ) was to emphasize terroir. Primacy was given to the limestony hillsides of the Leitha hills, and while wood could be used, you shouldn t be able to taste it. Of late I ve found this wine to be over-endowed alcoholically, and while I strive to be undogmatic, I find it ever harder to abide more than 14%. This (cask-sample) has great promise, more compact and moderate than 13 or 12, neither of which I offered. Even the Zalto can t tear this wine apart, the structure is so solid; below all this Champagne-like fruit, there s more toast and semolina in the Zalto, more balsam and aloe in the Riedel tulip. Either way this is how I love this wine to be Rosé vom Stein 12/750ml AEP BF-Merlot, and very often this is the best Rosé I offer, a vinous and even complex critter that only happens to be pink. That said, the 2014 shows the vintage at its least forthcoming in terms of oh-yum factor, but if you seek a massive yet light density of sinew with a smell of wild blackberries, you ll find it here. It s like Aubry s Champagne Rosé in still form. The gravelly phenolics of 14 are unmitigated, and the very big fruit is tightly stretched Austria > Leithaberg DAC / Prieler 9

13 2013 Blaufränkisch Ried Johanneshöhe 12/750ml AEP-108 Core List Wine To be shipped in September 12 until then. This is minty and black, very clear and peppery, less gushing and succulent than 12 but a lot of graphite, stewed tomato and rosemary. Tannin got in my way a little, but Georg promised with my hand in the fire that the wine would be its customary juicy self by bottling Blaufränkisch Leithaberg + 6/750ml AEP-112 From the parcel Pratsche in the village of Oggau, it has a stunningly pretty fragrance, BF at its most enticing; the palate is marrowy and sweet, lashed with mint and berries and, as a cask sample, a bunch of tannin. But this wine is quickly establishing a track record for authority and stylishness that Georg can be proud of, and the tannin will resolve. Look at this as an entrée into the higher levels of BF at a still-affordable price Blaufränkisch Marienthal + + 6/750ml AEP-109 One of two Grand Crus in the stable, this one (made famous by another grower already) is the Ch. Montrose of BF; coffee and iron, massive and full of fruit sweetness but overcome with a succulence that is somehow also stern. In Goldberg (coming up) the fruit is contained within the iron, but here it erupts and is easy to get as an Important Red, especially if you love Brunello, and then especially if you love the graphite finish, and the sweet scorch Blaufränkisch Goldberg + + ( + ) 6/750ml AEP-113 You reach a point in complexity where you seem to leave behind the world, slipping loose from any idea of sensory possibility. So the first question is, how the fuck does any red wine smell like this?? How so focused and yet so dense, how so meaty and yet so floral? How do you get this blackened skirt-steak smell to coexist with all this sweetness? This all is echoed in the palate, a little perturbed by tannin but with a fabulous whip of mint, graphite and blackberries. Goldberg is a geyser, Marienthal a lava flow. Goldberg has a focused, chiseled immensity, and the unnerving grace of a lion in repose Austria > Leithaberg DAC / Prieler

14 Heidi Schröck region / sub region Neusiedlersee-Hügelland / Rust VINEYARD AREA 10 hectares ANNUAL PRODUCTION 3,300 cases TOP SITES AND SOIL TYPES Vogelsang, Turner (eroded primary rock, mica slate, limestone and sandy loam) GRAPE VARIETIES 25% Weissburgunder 25% Welschriesling 10% Blaufränkisch 10% Furmint 10% Grauburgunder 10% Zweigelt 5% Gelber Muskateller 5% Sauvignon Blanc Heidi and her neighbors in Rust opted out of the DAC nonsense, to their everlasting credit, and now they re being punished for being bad boys and girls. The official map of the DAC names all the villages, but shows a blob of buildings where Rust should be, without a name, as if, because it refused the DAC, it ceased to exist. It is very hard to separate Heidi the person from Heidi the vintner, but of course I do, at the point of tasting. One must. We saw her on a Monday. Rust is nice on Mondays because everything s closed and all the weekend tourists are gone. The storks don t need to pose for pictures, and life is back to normal. We tasted in the usual little room, but Heidi was extremely proud to have built a WC right next to that room, so you don t need to go into the house any more. She was so proud that I used it even though I didn t really need to. I gave it 98 points. In my opinion point scores are best suited for toilets, and the gold standard, of course, are those Japanese contraptions that blow warm air and water on your nether-bits. But I digress. Of the many things I love about Heidi Schröck, one is that she s one of the few who really does what so many others only say they do let her wines lead the way. No two Heidi-vintages are the same. She doesn t wrestle her fruit into a shape she has determined in advance. In 2004 when nothing wanted to ferment fully, she made an entire vintage of Halbtrocken wines, anathema in the domestic market (but delicious then as now). The wines tend to shape-shift, but what they have in common is a kind of tenderness. Burgenland whites are more horizontal than the GVs and Rieslings of the Kamptal and its neighbors. They don t have a finicky precision. They re like a really good storyteller who carries you along the narrative even when you wished he d get to the point, and now you re captured and having fun. If the 2014s are any indicator, Heidi seems to be ever-more comfortable with wine-as-fellow-being instead of wineas-object-to- evaluate. But you need time for those kinds of wines. It helps to be able to daydream. Say you go to the coffee shop and you re gonna finish your project, so you get your booze and set up your laptop, and the next thing you know you re looking out the window at the world going by, and a half hour passes. To me these are crucial moments. They are how we relax enough to let the world in. The project can wait. Even if it can t wait, it can just fucking wait. You needed to daydream. And you need a kind of wine that lives right exactly there, in that very consciousness, not a wine that galvanizes your attention so you can nail it or score it or tweet about it. There are ways to make such wines, things you can do in the cellar, but you have to have an Ideal and steer toward it. Creamy texture is helpful. Leesiness is a reassuring flavor, I ve always felt. The breath of cask (as opposed to the taste of wood) is often a soulful thing. The larger point is, it s lovely when wines can address our calmer selves, but we can t hear them if we aren t cultivating (or tolerating) our calmer selves, in which case we are I think a little starved Austria > Neusiedlersee-Hügelland / Heidi Schröck 11

15 I d love Heidi s wines even if I didn t love Heidi, but I love them even more because I love the person who makes them. I know you know what I mean. Any of you who ve met Heidi will know exactly what I mean. If you haven t met her, the easiest way to sum her up is to say she s real, and you can talk with her. I mean, what can be more important about a person? She makes it look easy. Much easier, in fact, than it has been for her. But that s how it is with certain people, and Heidi s one of them. Though she s as lusty and earthy as anyone I know, she doesn t seem to know how not to be graceful. She is one of those very few people who appear to have figured out how to live. She possesses an innate elegance and sweetness. I have no idea what effort this might entail none, I suspect but she is naturally conscientious and thoughtful without being at all self-effacing. She invites affection with no discernible effort. Because all she has to do is offer it. Heidi s 14s were as expensive and time consuming to make as everyone else s, but in common with Prieler she benefited from that bit-less-ripeness and bit-more-focus the vintage gave. Heidi also has two magnificent daddylong-legs in her bathroom. They re so expressive they should have names. What do they do up in the corner of the ceiling, when they seem to be sleeping? Maybe meditate on the subjects of Furmint and Grauburgunder, as I shall presently do, but with nowhere near their grace Weissburgunder 12/750ml AHS-157 A classic Heidi moving-target wine, as the vintage compels. This one has a sweetheart aroma, the most loving face of 14, plum-blossom and good tisane. It claws a little on the palate, with a gravelly texture and (this time) marked acidity; thready and papery, it s a studious wine, not a party-girl. We bought all the rest of the 13, not because it was better, but to give this 14 the time it needs Furmint + 12/750ml AHS-158 Classic and typical aromas of linden and chamomile, and also a delicate vanilla; on the palate it behaves like Riesling, salty and vertical and with nuances of hyssop, all this with a definite chalky backdrop, stretchy and sinewy but ripe and floral. Incredibly lovely, wonderfully interesting wine. By the way, Heidi contemplates whether to put this wine back under cork, as Furmint can show reduction otherwise Furmint Sauvage 6/750ml AHS-163 I offer this not because I myself love it, but because Heidi took a chance and you should see the results. Basically this will please lovers of amphorae wines; it s antique and tannic, with something like a sous-voile aroma. It needs 15 minutes in the glass for varietal notes to emerge. Picked late, raisined but with no botrytis, still in cask and on the gross lees, it s uncivilized to be sure, but not ungainly Grauburgunder + 12/750ml AHS-159 The best since the superb 2009; the inferential aromas are round and elliptical; sweet straw, pale honey, more an ambience than a single point of focus. The palate is admirably firm, only the smallest bit smoky-oaky, more acacia-blossom but the loveliest thing is this cool firm gravelly backdrop, something we haven t yet seen in this wine. Maybe it s the vintage? Heidi was intrigued, as though her child suddenly started speaking a new language Vogelsang 12/750ml AHS-164 This often-delicious wine has tended to be a tough sell because there s no varietal tag. Yet Gemischter Satz is trendy, and that s what this is, varying year to year in varietal proportion and done entirely hands-off; where it goes it goes. Our little bird-song is trilling. Co-fermented Welschriesling, Chardonnay and Pinot Gris this time, and the wine is seriously yummy, with a grainy straw-and-hay inferred sweetness. Agreeable, fun, interesting Austria > Neusiedlersee-Hügelland / Heidi Schröck

16 2014 Rosé Biscaya 12/750ml AHS-153 Come on, who else has offered you a Rosé made from Lagrein, Teroldego, Peitit Verdot, Syrah, Merlot, Pinot Noir and Cabernet Sauvignon?!? In 2014 our polyglot friend has a high-toned spicy aroma, wild and garrigue-y, less rose-hippy than usual, but the palate is closer to the mold, such as the mold may be after these few vintages. The alc is lower at 12%, so I myself like it more, and it has the dicht (tactile density) of 14. A really energetic vintage of this very original wine. THE SWEET WINES These sport fancy new labels with lithographs of the foods you can drink with each of them. Heidi is determined to show you can drink sweet wines with savory foods, and I hope she succeeds where so many others such as, um, me have failed. There are four, one of which is amazing and truly outstanding Spätlese 6/375ml AHS-153H This gets you into the party. It s Pinot Blanc and Welschriesling, RS of 60g/l and acid of 6.7, so less zingy than a German wine; it s straw-sweet and roasted-corn savory, and it s basically the little sister of the BA speaking of which 2014 Beerenauslese 6/375ml AHS-162H Deep botrytis gold already showing flecks of amber Heady aromas and a solid baroque sweetness that anchors like an old heavy honey. At home we have a chestnut liqueur that smells like this; sometimes we glaze carrots with it. You can almost start to think of that red-cow Reggiano, which you could also grate over your carrots Ruster Ausbruch On The Wings Of Dawn 6/375ml AHS-???H Just one cask of what will eventually be an assemblage; it s all Sauvignon Blanc, but too young to describe Ruster Ausbruch On The Wings Of Dawn + + 6/375ml AHS-161H 150 months in barrel, but much less woody than that would suggest. Solid gold color; aromas of plantains, brown butter, figs and fleur-de-sel caramels, and a little like a sweet VOS-Oloroso. The palate shows a grace and repose and depth bordering on profundity, and a solid savor like a pan-seared diver scallop with butter and orange zest. Salty like a Breton butter-cake. Decant it and treat it like any other highly concentrated, tertiary savory wine, as it s the most vinous sweet wine I ve had in years, and it doesn t so much go with food as contain food Austria > Neusiedlersee-Hügelland / Heidi Schröck 13

17 Sattler region / sub region Neusiedlersee / Tadten VINEYARD AREA 15 hectares ANNUAL PRODUCTION 5,800 cases SOIL TYPES Gravel with brown earth and sand GRAPE VARIETIES 60% Zweigelt 30% St. Laurent 10% Syrah, Cabernet Sauvignon, Weißburgunder (Pinot Blanc), Welschriesling Erich had hail in 2014 that wiped out much of his St. Laurent, which meant he couldn t make a Reserve cuvée but put everything into his basic wine. As if that weren t enough, the September rains wreaked havoc on the flat vineyards of the east back of the lake, and Sattler harvested in fly fishing boots! Everything about this estate is candid and getting more so all the time. There aren t many wines. He knows what he wants to do, and does it. The wines are getting less oaky as he trusts his fruit more. The Austrian wine press is also noticing, and the wines are prominent among the top performers. When you start out you have certain wines against which you model your own. You reassure your customers (and yourself) that you can compete with viable wines in the familiar idioms. You are, in other words, guided by a certain timorousness and insecurity. If you can demonstrate your competence at the prevailing style, you comfort yourself, please your customers, and sell some wine. A lot of growers stop there. They know the right things to say, and they can create a plausible facsimile of a serious wine estate, and the wines are often tasty. But in the end they are dull. Because they have no way to answer the crucial questions: why do you exist? What is yours to say? Growers who are capable and curious, who actually want to develop, will often find after a few years that they can trust the essential taste of their fruit. And so they adjust their cellar work to favor things that are inherent and downplay that which is applied later. Oak goes from being a bad master to being a good servant. I think this is exactly what s happening at Erich Sattler s tidy little winery. Sattler is one of the few young growers I know who isn t out to get your attention but instead seeks merely to bring you pleasure. I love these kinds of wines, as you know. You take the first sip and think Well sure, O.K., it s clean and pleasant and all, but... and then the glass is suddenly empty and you barely know why. I could tell you why: it s because the wine tastes good and invites you to keep sipping Austria > Neusiedlersee / Sattler

18 2014 Zweigelt Rosé 12/750ml AST-056 Be glad if you have this already, as there isn t any more. It s spicy, rich, brilliantly structured and long, really outstanding quality here; thick fruit, density, excellent length. Consistently one of the best pinks I offer St. Laurent 12/750ml AST-057 For the first time this saw some wood, about 25% old large casks; I tasted a still-unfiltered cask sample, but juicy and darkchocolatey, a bit richer than usual (as there s nothing above it in 14) and a fine example of SL at its most earnest Zweigelt + 12/750ml AST-060 Again some old oak, and this is a beauty; Zweigelt at its roundest, most satiny and seductive, almost more in the SL direction but layered with all those sweet berries St. Laurent Reserve + 12/750ml AST-058 Pure dark chocolate and carob here; super attractive, recalling my ATF vintage, the 2005; warm sun cool wind, doesn t play a ton of notes but plays them all true, with purity and conviction; very high number on my delish-o-meter Zweigelt Reserve + 12/750ml AST-059 Has a jot of tannin to absorb 50% new oak but a wave of sweet fruit backs it up. It s the wine you wish they were making more of in the Alto Adige (where so many wines are alcoholically over-endowed), a ton of cool sweetness, smoky framboise, a playful arrival of spicy high tones. The finish has a twang of sassafras. Rich and frisky Austria > Neusiedlersee / Sattler 15

19 Südburgenland A benefit to my working life is that I get to visit people and places I ve grown very fond of. I wake up each morning, usually someplace I like, and think I get to see Heidi today, or I get to see Ludwig today, and so each morning is full of pleasant anticipation. And yet as I made the entirely new drive to an entirely new place, I realized the other kind of excitement, the edgier kind, when you view a foreign place with those keen wondering eyes. What drew me to Südburgenland was of course the promise of the wines, the special Blaufränkisch that comes from those iron-rich volcanic often schisty soils. Nothing else tastes like they do. It was an added bonus that the tiny region entailed a bit of a schlep no matter where you started from. From Vienna, or from Rust where my colleague and I started, you pass through a lovely chaos of verdant hills called the Bucklinger Welt, and then through another few folds of deeply wooded ridges. You can t drive fast. You curve and curve and curve some more. And then suddenly you emerge with the crazily steep Eisenberg hill in front of you, as if someone carved off a slice of the Mosel and plopped it down in a little winky corner right on the border to Hungary. It feels like a lost world, as Giles MacDonogh wrote. We sat in the tasting room with Reinhold Krutzler and looked across the valley. The village you see in the foreground, that s in Austria, he said. The one behind it is in Hungary. When we were kids we d see the lights from the guard towers, and our parents told us not to play too close to the border because there might be land-mines. The road signs are in both languages. You feel like you could go aground there, if you wanted to hide. There s a sort of sub-village on the hill above the sleepy village of Deutsch Schützen, called Weinberg, which contains all the winery cellars and Heurigen, dotted over the gentle upward roll. Only the Eisenberg itself is dramatic; the rest of the region is gentle and pretty. There s a local wine specialty called Uhudler, which is actually made from vitis Labrusca, but it s the remarkable Blaufränkisch that concerns us here. There are three acknowledged elite growers: Szemes, UweSchiefer, and Krutzler, and supporting them are a host of fine country wine estates, at least one of which Wallner is very fine indeed Austria Südbergenland As a rule Blaufränkisch likes a heavy soil that holds water and warms slowly. In Mittelburgenland it often grows on loam and clay. Here in Südburgenland there s also loam, but also the unique configuration of iron and schist that gives the wines an almost blatant minerality and a compelling pointed spiciness. Most Blaufränkisch can be called peppery, but these wines show an abundance of nuanced pepper, as though you were conducting tasting of various peppercorns from Indonesia and Sumatra and Madagascar. It s the closest red wine comes to the particular experience of tasting white wine, especially if you prize minerality highest among flavors. If really fervid Wachau Grüner Veltliner were red, it would be Eisenberg Blaufränkisch. I could have fastened myself to the top guy and strutted my pride of association. But I wanted to also offer you something hearty and affordable so that you d have an easier wedge into this region. Krutzler is indeed elite, but such things are appreciated best when they re predicated on a basis. Which makes us ask a new question: how good is that basis, at its best? How good can good be? Thus I overcome my desire to shape this portfolio in the tidiest possible way, and rather than choose between two excellent estates, I offer them both. Ha ha; that sounds so cerebral! In fact I m just a helpless promiscuous wine slut who can t say no to anything exciting.

20 Wallner region / sub region Südburgenland / Deutsch-Schützen VINEYARD AREA 8 hectares ANNUAL PRODUCTION 2,500 cases TOP SITES AND SOIL TYPES Deutsch-Schützen Weinberg (profound, medium-weight to heavy loam over slate in deeper layers, some iron oxide) ; Eisenberg (light to medium-weight loam and sand mixed with slate and iron oxide) GRAPE VARIETIES 70% Blaufränkisch 13% white grapes 7% Zweigelt 5% Cabernet Sauvignon (cuvée only) 3% Merlot (cuvée only) 2% St. Laurent His little brochure has the emblem echt typisch erdig Genuine, typical, earthy. Sums it right up. Gerhard Wallner assumed the estate from his father in 2002, and is up to a good 7 hectares, making honest yet polished wine. If you re tempted to suppose the wines are rustic, believe me they aren t. Nor are they rough-cut, foursquare or heavy-footed. They re delicious, extroverted, hearty wines that also convey a lot of finesse. They show all the uniquely spicy character and clarity of the best wines of the region. Though Wallner grows Zweigelt and St. Laurent (as well as a little Cab and Merlot), the Blaufränkisch is obviously front and center, and it s the wine I ll concentrate on. Wallner will make you smile. Wallner will make you very nearly laugh out loud. But Wallner will also make you pause at times, because these wines, as happy as they are, are not jolly or boisterous. Gerhard believes in keeping back-vintages around as long as possible, to show what Blaufränkisch is like when out of its infancy. I like his young wines, but I m going to show you these vintages as long as I possibly can Austria > Südburgenland / Wallner 17

21 2012 St. Laurent 12/750ml AWL-025 It s just the sumptuous Burgundy-like SL we like best; velvety, a little earthy, long and sweet on the palate. It reminds me of Oregon Pinot Noir, actually; elegant and sexy or like some amalgam of Corvino s depth with Schiava s fruit and charm Blaufränkisch Eisenberg DAC 12/750ml AWL /375ml AWL-013H 6/1500ml AWL-013M The entry-level BF now carries the useless DAC, which I refuse to explain because it is so useless. The wine, however, is amazingly useful, showing the fruit and berry face of BF before all the herbs and pepper emerges. Last year I said it was light but it s put on weight and shows more richness, with the twang of the variety Blaufränkisch 12/750ml AWL-011 The cool, long season of the 08 vintage was made for BF; silky and deeply berried, showing a firm focus of pepper and mineral, and now just entering its chocolate phase and showing pink peppercorn notes. Bless him for still having this wine! It shows all the intrigue of BF entering its tertiary phase Blaufränkisch Eisenberg DAC Reserve ( + ) 12/750ml AWL /375ml AWL-027H 6/1500ml AWL-027M Rich, round and spicy, a big creamy wine somebody dropped a mint into. It shows in the second half, so I suspect we re seeing the first emergence from bottle-shock. I sense a profusely cherried juicy wine with the flowery peppers as spice and points of focus Blaufränkisch Reserve + 12/750ml AWL-015 As long as he can offer multiple vintages I ll share them with you and you can pick the one(s) you want. As I hope you will! This one is wide open and wolfishly tasty. Even the tannin fits. Seductive, ripe, angular, serpentine and twisty; bark and char and nettles into a spice-riven finish Blaufränkisch Reserve + 12/750ml AWL /375ml AWL-002H My favorite. It remains for me the exemplar for Wallner s BF and for BF in general. It has everything, especially that incisive peppery spice that borders on kinky; Serrano-smoky, truffley, amazingly silky texture. Subjectively it s a +++ wine because it brings everything to the game without trying to charm Blaufränkisch Namenlos + ( + ) 12/750ml AWL-023 Nameless is his top cuvée of BF; very old vines (from 40 to 90) and done in 500-liter hogsheads, it can succumb to the toomuchness of these things, but in some vintages like this one it touches on the miraculous. Bearing in mind it was two weeks bottled when I saw it, it s already popping and incipiently explosive. It seems dark and smoky, tobacco-y and seriously iron-like, as if it would cure anemia. Layer after layer here I have had Le Pin that impressed me less than this does, and more than once Austria > Südburgenland / Wallner

22 Krutzler region / sub region Südburgenland / Deutsch-Schützen VINEYARD AREA 10 hectares ANNUAL PRODUCTION 5,833 cases TOP SITES AND SOIL TYPES Deutsch-Schützen Weinberg and Bründlgfangen (profound, medium-weight to heavy loam over slate in deeper layers, some ironoxide) ; Eisenberg (light to medium-weight loam and sand mixed with slate and ironoxide) GRAPE VARIETIES 84% Blaufränkisch 8% Zweigelt 3% Merlot 3% white grapes 2% Cabernet Sauvignon (cuvée only) In many respects this was the happiest and most encouraging of any visit I made this year. That s right: any visit. Because a good thing happened, which I would never have expected. Reinhold Krutzler is one of the Big Names in Austrian red wine. He belongs to the elite. His Perwolff is iconic. And for a long time, I felt his wines were somewhat earnest, self-serious, groping to realize the stature conferred upon them, and mindful of the international palates that would taste and judge them. They were polished and at their best they tasted important, but just as often they were brooding, tannic and disconcerting, the tannin behaving like a bouncer who wouldn t let you into the club. There was no reason for him to change course. He is successful. And yet, he did. When I tasted the deliriously expressive new vintage of his basic Blaufränkisch, I had to ask, Is this the vintage or did you make some changes in the cellar? And he replied that he wanted more pure fruit in his wines, and to make wines that would engage the drinker and not just impress the critics. This makes me incredibly happy. It is such a kind, almost moral thing for him to have done. I have often suspected that deliberately difficult wines are more about the grower s ego than the drinker s happiness. You can do anything you like, offer any angles, edges, intricacies, challenges and mysteries if you have earned your way in by offering sensual pleasure. Give me something my body enjoys and I will follow you anywhere. But give me something my body finds opaque or repellant and I don t care what else you want to show me. And so I am as happy as if I had made a new friend. Which in a way, I have. When you read through Krutzler s brochure his priorities emerge quite clearly. Fine minerality, silky texture, The wines exude intense minerality, concise, earthy, fruity, sophisticated. He has found that his best results derive from making small-blend cuvées rather than single-site bottlings. He also identifies the unusually wide swings between day and night temperatures as major contributors to the fervent aromas he seeks. BF is a high-acid grape in any case. Its analyses would shock you, in fact. I m all too aware there s a theory that red wines shouldn t have high acid, but it is far from the whole truth. Blaufränkisch thrives on its acidity; it makes the wines fresh even when they re broodingly intense; it gives them the incisive clarity they show at their best. Krutzler s is a 10-hectare estate, not very big at all, with three on the Eisenberg Austria > Südburgenland / Krutzler 19

23 2014 Blaufränkisch + 12/750ml AKR-019 Here s when it hit me. I wrote, Ripe chocolatey aroma, actually quite clear, and wow, this is spectacular, by far the finest young BF ever from here; vivid, fruit-forward, juicy and peppery. Whatever happened I love it and hope it continues. Alc 12.6% (the label will say 13) and this seems deliberate. What a friendly character this is! Come to Daddy! Please, do not miss this. We need to reward this sweet guy for doing exactly the right thing Blaufränkisch Eisenberg DAC Reserve + 12/750ml AKR /375ml AKR-021H 6/1500ml AKR-021M Two weeks in bottle when I tasted it year vines; excellent peppery aromas, complex and enticing; tannin is present but almost silky, and the wine is compact, incisive and classy. It s infinitely lacier than was the 2012, and so its sweetness emerges, especially on the super-attractive finish Blaufränkisch Perwolff + ( + ) 12/750ml AKR /375ml AKR-020H 6/1500ml AKR-020M This iconic red is still in cask; through the tannic veil is something sweet and lovely; ripe cherries and a Burgundian cast, like the violet side of Volnay or the south side of Nuits St Georges; succulent and euphoric, not self-serious or dour, and finishing with a wash of happy ripe berries and, curiously, even flowers, wisteria and lilac first time I ve found that florality in BF. There s a reason this wine is an icon Austria > Südburgenland / Krutzler

24 Glatzer region / sub region Carnuntum / Göttlesbrunn VINEYARD AREA 54 hectares ANNUAL PRODUCTION 25,000 cases TOP SITES AND SOIL TYPES Rosenberg, Kräften (calcerous clay) ; Haidacker (gravel, loam and clay) ; Altenberg (gravel and clay, with high lime content) ; Schüttenberg (sandy loam and gravel) ; Bärenreise (sandy loam and clay) After losing all his Pinot Noir and St Laurent in 2014, Walter was as hale as could be expected. Indeed he had a markedly excellent vintage for white wines in The reds struck me as more tannic than usual, which was a little odd. Glatzer has always been a producer of addictively drinkable red wines at the basic end, and I hope that isn t changing, as there s too little such wine in the world. I don t mean wines that pander with smoothness. No Kenny G wines here. I mean wines of substance and vinosity that don t need to demonstrate their High Seriousness by dint of gritty tannin. Wines you can love, wines that purr, wines that make you happy delicious wines. And, wines from native grapes that don t need a zillion percent new oak. The top cuvées, of course; these receive the wood-treatment appropriate to their stature. But basic wines of character don t have to do anything but bring gladness. GRAPE VARIETIES 37% Zweigelt 17% Blaufränkisch 12% Grüner Veltliner 10% Merlot 8% Cabernet Sauvignon 5% Weissburgunder 3% Sauvignon Blanc 2% St. Laurent 2% Pinot Noir 2% Syrah 2% other 2015 Austria > Carnuntum / Glatzer 21

25 2014 Grüner Veltliner 12/750ml AGL-188 Core List Wine This normally textbook GV, excellent because it has no particular variations or special features, is another critter in 2014; remarkably mineral and delineated, a lot of ground-up-rock density, and a strong backbone (though it showed more fruit in the Riedel tulip albeit more overall flavor in Zalto); lighter in body but richer in structure and nuance than usual Grüner Veltliner Dornenvogel + 12/750ml AGL-189 Perhaps the best-ever vintage for this reserve wine Dornenvogel means thorn bird, and these avian marauders like to eat the ripest grapes. Thus the metaphor. There s simply more here, more oils, more herbs, spices, complexity. Walter almost apologizes for its lightness but there s so much packed into it, including really nice sponti (ambient-yeast fermented) notes. REPRESENTS AN ALMOST ABSURD VALUE Weissburgunder 12/750ml AGL-190 Crackery and leesy; I like this wine best when it s on the rich side, and 2014 is especially deft and attractive; a real solid crayfish substance, like a bouillabaisse in a glass or even a crayfish etouffé, but there s force here, structure and saltiness. I m happy Sauvignon Blanc 12/750ml AGL-191 Redcurranty and woodruffy, beets and dried roses; moderate pyrazine but a wonderful fresh herbal shade-green balsam lift, and as the finish falls away this lovely stony-chervil-y thing remains. It s discreet in the tulip, outrageous in the Zalto. It s also so good it precluded my offering the single-vineyard Schütteberg, because I wasn t convinced it was worth trading up to, succulent though it was Zweigelt Riedencuvée 12/750ml AGL-193 Core List Wine A beautiful sappy cherry aroma; the palate is succulent and more dense (and tannic) than usual; actually pretty serious stuff, with lots of mint and blackberries. I confess to being silly-sensitive to tannin, but that said I still hope this degree of tannin is an aberration of the vintage and not a harbinger of things to come. Many of you will disagree, and find this wine more compelling than it s been Blaufränkisch 12/750ml AGL-194 Core List Wine Sleek, tightly wound; violets and steel; the vintage stretches this wine into a taut tense string, less sapid and juicy than usual. The aromas are very fine and spicy and the palate is vibrating and snapping, but there is that tannin. Perhaps it will soften Pinot Noir 12/750ml AGL-195 The 12 was among the most delicious Austrian PNs I ve ever had, and I didn t expect the cooler 13 to equal it. The wine seemed correct, light and herbal and sweet, and I waffled whether to offer it; what finally carried me over was the wine s spicy length. It s a true PN, light but not diffident Austria > Carnuntum / Glatzer

26 2012 St Laurent Altenberg 12/750ml AGL-197 This is a single-vineyard reserve bottling, and it shows SL at its roasty best. It s hugely attractive, almost mainstream, but I love that warmth and stewy generosity Zweigelt Dornenvogel + 12/750ml AGL-180 This highly impressive wine is wiggling its deliberate way out from under its concentration. It needs two hours in the decanter, but it emerges big and sexy with swashbuckling fruit, something between ripe-vintage Cab Franc and Vino Nobile. A fine demonstration of What-Can-Be-Done with Zweigelt when it is respected and cared for Blaufränkisch Reserve 12/750ml AGL-200 ( + ) It has 20% of the top-vineyard Bernreiser in it, and it is really good; it combines the sleek lines of the vintage with Glatzer s creamy style; a fine, almost noble fragrance, like great lamb and ludicrous raspberries. Some tannin to reckon with here also, but the finish is like chewing leaves and violets Austria > Carnuntum / Glatzer 23

27 Weinviertel The Wine-Quarter is in fact a disparate region containing more-or-less everything northeast, north or northwest of Vienna that doesn t fit in to any other region. You can drive a half-hour and not see a single vine, then suddenly be in vineyard land for fifteen minutes before returning to farms and fields again. Vines occur wherever conditions favor them; good soils, exposures and microclimates, but it s anything but what we d call wine country. Which is in fact rather charming, since it doesn t attract the usual glom of wine-people. I don t seem to be much of a pack animal. I tend away from the crowd, even when I appreciate what that crowd is crowding toward. It s easy to go to the established regions and find excellent wine if you have a fat wallet. It s too easy. I find I enjoy going somewhere alone and finding diamonds in the rough. Alas, Austria is a wine culture in which one is hardly ever alone. The entire Weinviertel is known, as Germany s Rheinhessen is known as the up and coming new region, DACs and related nonsense notwithstanding. This started maybe 20 years ago, when the first wave of young growers applied modern methods and made far better wines than the innocuous plonk which came before. Attention was duly paid. But with repeated exposure one began to want something the wines weren t giving. They were certainly contemporary enough, all cold-fermented stainless-steel yada yada, but most of them were lacking animus and soul. With the entrance of another wave of young vintners, it began to change. It needs a certain drive, a kind of urgency to want to endow one s wines with something more than simple competence. The formula for that is unexceptional, and lots of C-students can do it. And make perfectly decent wine. But certain people ask certain questions: How can I unlock what s in this land? How do I make imprinted wines that people will remember? Why do it at all if it won t be wonderful? For someone like this, wine isn t just a formula or recipe; it s a matter of anguish and relief and mystery and frustration and delight, it is so dimensional as to be virtually human. The more you live with it, the less you need what you learned and the better you hone and hear your intuitions. You can always spot such people because they re Austria Weinviertel much happier in the vineyards than in the cellar. After all, the cellar is full of machines, but the vineyard is full of life. Surprises are few in the cellar but constant in the vineyard. Talk to your land and your vines for long enough and soon you will know when they answer you back. Every grower like this will tell you he was taught all wrong. They teach you to act before they show you how to listen. And in the end their wines become like they themselves are; alive, alert, attuned, questing.

28 Schwarzböck region / sub region Weinviertel / Hagenbrunn VINEYARD AREA 24 hectares ANNUAL PRODUCTION 15,000 cases TOP SITES AND SOIL TYPES Kirchberg, Sätzen (löss) ; Aichleiten (flyschgestein with löss) ; Hölle (flysch) GRAPE VARIETIES 50% Grüner Veltliner 15% Zweigelt 10% Gelber Muskateller 10% Riesling 5% Merlot 10% other Rudi Schwarzböck assumed control of the winery from his father in 1994, though he says 1997 is really the first vintage I was happy with, before proceeding to blow my freakin mind with an insanely fabulous Riesling from that great vintage. His wife Anita took her share of the reins in 2003, and the two function as a seamless team. If I don t go into detail about vineyard or cellar work it s not because I m short of data, but instead because none of it would surprise you. Most of the really good ones do things a certain way, and I ll need several years of hangin out time with these good folks before I ll know what lives between the tick and the tock. Hagenbrunn is virtually at the cityline of Vienna you d expect the trams to run out there. Some of the vineyards are on not-insignificant slopes, and most soils are loamy löss, with Riesling being grown in sandstone covered over with löss. But how to describe the wines? Theirs is a silky substance not unlike Gobelsburg, in fact. They re not as creamy as Berger or Setzer; theirs is a more upfront palate dance. They make a quick and delightful impression. Oh just taste them. The wines are all arch and modern but not only arch and modern; there s an earthy substance to them also, and boy are they good value. Rudi had a crushingly intense harvest, and seems bemused by the results. More so than I myself was, quite honestly. I don t mind little wines as long as they re not dilute and flaccid, but Rudi s gotten used to a lot of ripeness and alcohol and these wines perhaps struck him as mingy. I respectfully disagree. I myself have had far greater difficulties with his wines when they started roaring around north of 14%. The guy has to think I m perverse if not actively deranged. But there you have it. Jon Bonné and I have talked about this, and each of us has written about it. Of course 14% is an arbitrary line. Of course my inhibition (or prohibition) excludes me from wines I might like. But I ll take that chance. Because at (or around) 14%, several things are wont to happen. One is, the wines may show actual alcohol, medicinally or in the form of jalapeño-heat. I don t like these things. But even if they re not there, many wines in that zone show a coarse concentration, which is the opposite of things like finesse or grace. And even if that problem is avoided, how do I feel by the second glass? Like I m tired of that wine, that s how I feel. So obviously, we re all calibrated differently, and maybe my palate s a wuss. But I doubt it. I really do. It s just as plausible to interpret the other guy s palate as just-plain gross. Neither accusation sticks; we just do what works for us. In any case we were all glad not to have to tiptoe around the land mines of over-alcoholic wines Austria > Weinviertel / Schwarzböck 25

29 2014 Grüner Veltliner 12/1000ml ASB-057L The wine is just fine, though very light and snappy. In a way this is what Liters should be; many previous vintages have overdelivered Grüner Veltliner Vier Gärten 12/750ml ASB-063 Four gardens is, you guessed it, a cuvée of four little vineyards; the 14 is sleek and pebbly, 11.3% alc with chaptalization; snap peas and chervil; finishes with a nip of phenol (but who ll study the finish?) Grüner Veltliner Bisamberg-Kreuzenstein DAC 12/750ml ASB-065 This is the local Grosslage. The wine is classically peppery, and shows charm, and something like the first nautical dawn of ripeness, but still with a fresh-mown cut, but this time no finishing bite Grüner Veltliner Sätzen DAC 12/750ml ASB-066 Deep loess soil but not an especially loessy aroma in 14; more boxwood and ore than lentil; lots of sorrel and nettle and marjoram; suave mid-palate umami; 14 only shows in a somewhat clipped finish Gelber Muskateller 12/750ml ASB-058 Often among the best Muscats in this offering, this 14 is slight but super-clean, honest, with excellent varietality, and not at all coarse as less-ripe GM often is. It s like chewing a Thai-basil leaf Riesling Reserve Aichleiten + 12/750ml ASB-068 First offering. Another beauty-riesling from the beauty-vintage for Riesling; all of 12.5% alc, it s a fine elegant mirabelle-y 13, with an extract-plumpness and still a little closed. A radish snap identifies it as Austrian, as does the quince and apricot fruit, and in this case the grace and length and the animated serenity of this gorgeous vintage Rosé 12/750ml ASB Zweigelt-Merlot, this has a lot of juice for a 14, and enough vinosity for year-round drinking. Fruit runs to tomato-water and rhubarb and rose hips. Second year in a row of extra class with this wine Zweigelt Bisamberg + 12/750ml ASB-062 He does know his stuff with this wine; like the 12 this feints toward Blaufränkisch; hedge-berry more than tree fruit at first. Then a riot of cerise in the middle, and the finish is a swoon of sweet cherry. For a mid-weight wine (think Cru Beaujolais) this has all kinds of length and seductiveness. This is just the kind of incredibly attractive red wine you d be likely to miss if you only focused on red-wine producers Austria > Weinviertel / Schwarzböck

30 H.u.M. Hofer region / sub region Weinviertel / Auersthal VINEYARD AREA 20 hectares ANNUAL PRODUCTION 16,600 cases TOP SITES AND SOIL TYPES Freiberg (löss with loam) ; Kirchlissen (löss with clay) GRAPE VARIETIES 53% Grüner Veltliner 13% Zweigelt 9% Riesling 8% Welschriesling 4% St. Laurent 3% Weissburgunder 2% Gelber Muskateller 8% other Farming practices Bio-Ernte Certified Organic Auersthal is just barely beyond Vienna s northern suburbs, in a dead-still little wine village. It s rather odd to drive there and see lots of wee little oil derricks, but such little oil as Austria produces comes from these parts, deep below the löss. I had either forgotten or had never known the estate was organic; they belong to a group called Bio-Ernte which has standards above the EU guidelines. In speech, by the way, bio is pronounced to rhyme with B.O. which can lead to some drollery as you hear references to B.O. wine unless, unlike me, you have left behind your adolescence. The vineyards lie in a rain-shadow and have to endure hot summers. In fact Hofer plants his Riesling in a fog-pocket as he gets so little rain. The wines are pressed conventionally (no whole-cluster) with skin contact, and all whites are done in stainless steel. The wines have a quality of moderation and intelligence; they are clear and reasonable. In normal vintages such as 08 and 10 they are exceptionally deft and even charming. In warm years they can flirt with extravagance. They have a kind of firm smoothness that s cool like marble. There are some lovely reds to show you. So, great wine, amazing value, and certified-organic viticulture? Help me make this lovely man a star! 2015 Austria > Weinviertel / H.u.M. Hofer 27

31 2014 Grüner Veltliner 12/1000ml AHF-069L It s snappy and even mentholated; super-herbal and spicy apple; excellent and not only for a Grüner Veltliner Von den Rieden 12/750ml AHF-072 Core List Wine We might have a break in supply after the 13 sells out, because this wine needs plenty of time; it s showing taut and phenolic, even from a room-temp sample we decanted. The aromas are fine and typical, so the question is whether the palate is just too tight or too immature Grüner Veltliner Kirchlissen + 12/750ml AHF Grüner Veltliner Freiberg + 12/750ml AHF-076 I offered you the Kirchlissen last year, a perfect wine in 13 because it avoided the over-alcoholic thing it often has done (as did the very pretty 14, which I ll hold in reserve). And I m adding a new offering, the single-vineyard Freiberg, because they are so miraculously good. And such a mutually distinct pair. Kirchlissen more refined and willowy, more complex and cooler. It s grown on deep loess-loam and is expressive and peppery, rhubarb and sorrel and just glowing with its perfect balance. Freiberg is so stone-fruity it s almost like a Riesling or like one profile of Riesling. Vetiver and flowering-fields to a strong degree; elegant and delicious; weighty but not big, and amazingly lovable with the finest mineral backbone below its curvaceous form Riesling Zwei + 12/750ml AHF-077 He made two Rieslings in 13, one conventionally crushed-and-pressed, and this one, whole-cluster pressed. It s an utter beauty, and like certain earlier vintages it reminds me of Alzinger, specifically of Hollerin in its delicate yet lavish stone-fruit. This has fantastic spice, quivering-with-life-force and glow; so pretty and so many-sided Zweigelt Rosé + 12/750ml AHF-070 This is sheer dee-lish-o-rama in a lush ripe-tomato and rose-hip way; not so berried or sheer, but succulent and extravagantly aromatic. The silver lining of the dearth of reds in 2014 are these rich yummy rosés Zweigelt 12/1000ml AHF-063L Quite round and plummy, like non-oaked Tempranillo; a bit less berried and violet-y than usual; charmingly easy and round, with even a little nuance of Marechal Foch my friend Deirdre Heekin would like it. And, you should really read her book Zweigelt Klassik 12/750ml AHF-075 Round and berried, velvety and typical, loving and enveloping, with a warm earthy touch Austria > Weinviertel / H.u.M. Hofer

32 Setzer region / sub region Weinviertel / Hohenwarth VINEYARD AREA 30 hectares ANNUAL PRODUCTION 16,700 cases TOP SITES AND SOIL TYPES Laa, Eichholz (löss over alluvial gravel and limestone) GRAPE VARIETIES 50% Grüner Veltliner 30% Roter Veltliner 20% Riesling, Pinot Blanc, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Zweigelt, Merlot For Setzer 2014 is a vintage that s easy to grasp, i.e., the wines are self-evidently excellent and you don t need my esoterically refined sensibility to understand them. Which leads to an interesting question. What does happen with the wines in the middle? The ones that aren t rowdy and galvanic, but also not cerebral or arcane? I often call such wines humane, or gracious, or civilized, but that makes it sound like the way you have to act during the first dinner at your girlfriend s parents house. I receive an actual tactile sense of pleasure from cordial, charming wines, but that s because I insist on having the time to pause and appreciate them. It does come down to time. Charm is a thing we cultivate. Hans and Uli Setzer are a husband-wife team of wine-school grads maintaining a winery imbued with intelligence and purpose. I was surprised how close they were to the Kamptal and Kremstal (15 minutes from Berger or Gobelsburg) and wondered why Hohenwarth was banished to the lowly Weinviertel. Hans pointed out to me Hohenwarth sits at the same altitude as the summit of the Heiligenstein, thus essentially different from the more sheltered Kamptal. Nor does it have the pure löss terraces of the Kremstal or even the neighboring Wagram. Though Setzer was a discovery for me, the estate is conspicuously successful, exporting to three continents and showing up on many of the top wine lists inside Austria, not to mention being a sort of house-estate for the Vienna Symphoniker orchestra. The question is whether craftsmanship, intelligence and charm are things we value enough to pay for to pay anything for. We pay for greatness and we pay for value but when we buy a Setzer wine I would argue we re paying for a kind of humanity and civility. Do you value good conversation? Then what would you say if someone observed What s the fuss? All you did was sit and talk? You d say, You don t understand, clearly, and you d be correct. And you d start to know why I feel these lovely wines are less cherished than they ought to be Austria > Weinviertel / Setzer 29

33 2014 Grüner Veltliner 12/1000ml ASZ-070L Fragrant, light and sleek; dry, with a white tea, fennel and chervil profile Grüner Veltliner Vesper 12/750ml ASZ-071 The lightest GV above the Liter, in 14 it is lentil and then some, plus ore and even coconut milk; marjoram and salt, boxwood and basil; so light yet with such density Grüner Veltliner Ausstich DAC + 12/750ml ASZ-077 Juicy and sweet now, and this is in no way a difficult-vintage wine but just a dense charming GV loaded with grip and deliciousness Grüner Veltliner ( + ) 6/750ml ASZ-076 From a vineyard called Laa, the goal here is to show the effects of highly dense vineyard plantings 8000 vines per hectare the idea being to stress each vine and cause it to plunge its roots deep in search of water. In some years this spills over its alcoholic banks, but the 13 was masterly and this may be just as good. Semolina and pepper; it has its intensity and creaminess but not its sometimes-overripeness; it s like a cream of basmati with herbs; monumental in its way, like a Hiedler Thal but cooler. The finish is all tapioca Riesling 12/750ml ASZ-078 It recalls the young 2010s, dark and carbonized below (and not entirely below) the key-lime and mirabelle and apricot. It s long and serious, though by no means dour, with a radish nettle-y note creeping into the finish Zweigelt 12/750ml ASZ-072 Each time I open a bottle of this wine at home I think Bless the person who made a wine like this. As always, this has sweet aromas of ripe berries and cherry tobacco, leading to a dusty cedary palate. A little more tannic than the 12, but maintains its form as a kind of right-bank Claret Austria > Weinviertel / Setzer

34 Wagram The road from Vienna northwest to Krems is probably the only boring country road in all of Austria. It follows the flood plain of the Danube, and is deadflat. About half way along, you notice little hills to your right about 5 miles in the distance. These are the löss terraces of the WAGRAM. Nearing Krems, the terraces draw closer and you re in the Kremstal, while directly ahead the dramatic hills of the Wachau beckon. The löss hills of the Wagram are said to be unique in Europe for their depth, up to twenty meters (65 feet) in places.wagram s the löss leader har har har. But the sandy-loamy ground is so thick that vintners can dig cellars in it without joists, yet this same soil is amazingly porous. This is ideal soil for GrüVe, and where it changes to red gravel or primary rock the vine changes to Riesling or Sauvignon Blanc. Vineyards are mostly on terraces or gentle slopes, facing south, far enough from the river to avoid botrytis in most years. Can you taste it? I can t, at any rate. I am certain I couldn t identify any flavor markers for Wagram per se. The wines resemble Kremstal wines to me, at least those nearer the Danube and also grown on löss. Still, they had to call it something, and Wagram does sound like one of the bad-guys from Lord Of The Rings Austria > Wagram 31

35 Ecker region / sub region Wagram / Kirchberg-Mitterstockstall VINEYARD AREA 20 hectares ANNUAL PRODUCTION 11,600 cases TOP SITES AND SOIL TYPES Steinberg (weathered primary rock) ; Schloßberg, Im Wasn, Mitterberg (löss) ; Mordthal (löss with high lime content) GRAPE VARIETIES 50% Grüner Veltliner 15% Zweigelt 12% Roter Veltliner 5% Riesling 5% St. Laurent 5% Weißburgunder 4% Sauvignon Blanc 4% Gelber Muskateller Please read this slightly longer-thanusual text, because in the course of talking about Bernhard Ecker and his remarkably lovely wines, I find I need to say something about this dialect of wine, and it s something I think you need to hear, as a counterpoint to what you re hearing from the naturalistas. Not an argument against them, but the other side of the yin-yang. This is modern wine at its very best. And I m willing to understand feeling defensive about deploying a word like modern, because I agree we should be wary; too many times modern wines are simply denuded and clinical. Yet we should also be wary of being too precious about what we d call traditional wines. It takes a degree of discernment to distinguish their true virtues from the ones we ourselves like to make out of their flaws. I like every single wine I taste here. I like their exceptional clarity, their incisive detail, their high-definition obsessive nuance, their fresh vitality, and most of all I love their charm and deliciousness. It s not the same sort of charm we see in Setzer, whose wines are more cashmere-textured, but it is something of great good humor that elevates the wines from mere correctness. I don t want all wines to be modern as these are, but I want all MODERN wines to have the animation and soul I taste here. Soul may seem like an odd word to use to talk about cultured-yeast cold-fermented stainless-steel wines, especially if you re into natural wines where you ve come to equate soul with something else. But soul is more complex than that. And it lives where it lives, not where we assume it lives. I sit tasting the wines, suffused with pleasure, and find myself wondering Who would reject these wines out of hand, on what principle, and to what end? I feel acutely sad that a person would exclude himself from this form of happiness. There is no dichotomy between wines like these and the special syntax of natural wines unless we insist there is. And if we do, we re excluding another valid species of beauty for reasons I don t think stand up. Either that, or I m greedy and I don t want to have to choose. I want them both. I find soul in these wines because something in them ignites something in me. I taste plenty of modern, competent wine that does the job and leaves nothing behind. Not these. Delight lives in these. Clarity I think is a positive value. Clear pure fruit and mineral density and thirst-inducing fragrance are all positive values. There s nothing contrived or plausible about such wines, and even the phrase such wines is misleading because there are very few such wines. I think it boils down to this: it s not smart to think that only tertiary, vinous wines can ever be natural or have animus. They breathe their particular breath, those wines, and I love them just as you do. But I also love the primary, because I think it takes a special kind of passion to want the drinker to see virginal fruit and terroir so brilliantly. Apart from which, soul is a thing that opens and dilates, and if we ourselves insist that wines like Ecker s are Austria > Wagram / Ecker

36 clinical, then we re closing off an avenue of bliss, and our souls are wounded. Don t be misled by the paucity of plusses. Every single one of these wines will offer you such delight as you rarely taste, at astonishingly gentle prices, and they are honest gleaming thirsty-for-more wines, the kind you can t believe the bottle is empty already Grüner Veltliner 12/1000ml AEC-079L Though I show it first we actually taste it last, after the biggest GVs, not as a palate re-set but rather to test just how good it is. And this 14 is shockingly good. The spread from top-to-bottom is narrower here in 2014, and this is almost sad, it s so tempting. Its modest stature is only indicated by the quick finish. Please remember, always, that the truest measure of a winery is not what it delivers to the person spending a lot of money, but to the person spending just a little Grüner Veltliner Stockstall 12/750ml AEC-086 Nice, honest, lentilly refreshing light-bodied GV, but fervently aromatic Grüner Veltliner Schlossberg ( + ) 12/750ml AEC-082 The Steinberg vineyard bottling, so astonishing in 2013, was very good in 14, but this loess site was sweeter, more jovial and extroverted; maizy and grainy, long cling of saltiness, with mere nuances of GV pepper; focused and crunchy yet with a pliant fruit peeking out right now, and about 2-3 years from popping Grüner Veltliner Mordthal 12/750ml AEC-088 A curio on the label; picked with a potential alcohol of 13.3%, it was later analyzed at 14.1%. A second analysis is pending as this ought to be impossible. In any case the wine is excellent; rich old-vines density; cooked ham, a little maple-cure; an untamed intensity on the finish. Old vines (over 50) from one of the top sites in Wagram, it sees time in steamed acacia casks Roter Veltliner 12/750ml AEC-084 Ecker was just the second estate I visited, and the first one had seemed to embody all the concerns about vintage-14. But the first sniff of this wine was hugely reassuring This has energy and giddiness; 14 may be OK after all! I wrote. Salty, herbal like Verdelho but brisk like Albariño; great fun, giggly and snappy; easy to drain a bottle like this. The variety is not genetically related to GV, but rather to Neuburger and Malvasia. It gets its name from the reddish cast on the skins when ripe. It tends to taste like 4-5 year old GV when it reaches its sandalwood-shiitake stage, and it ages quite well Gelber Muskateller + 12/750ml AEC-080 For a wee laddie of 10.8% alc, in a vintage like 14, this must be considered a masterpiece; so dense and limber, it almost shows a Riesling-like minerality and with the elderflower and quince aromas of ripe Muscat. There s real length here; it s better than the 13, and a highlight of the entire journey; somehow both firm and melting and this finish: wow Austria > Wagram / Ecker 33

37 2014 Riesling 12/750ml AEC-092 Again how? This was supposed to be a difficult vintage, yet this wine is excellent, limey-salty, taut in structure but with loads of stone-fruits; animated, long flavors, and though the charm might be considered angular, the wine is genial to drink Zweigelt 12 /1000ml AEC-089L This was perfectly good! He put 15% in large oak casks to round it out (and added a teeny amount of 13), and overall it leans in the round St Laurent direction Zweigelt Brillant 12/750ml AEC-090 No wood. No malo and yet, what warm, round fruit, what plums and yums! Like evening shade on a day that was warm; it yields a bit to its St. Laurent parent, and it s like a vacation in the glass; repose, freshness (sex!) and the moon rises, and somebody lights the lanterns St. Laurent + 12/750ml AEC-091 This is basically entirely wonderful. Grown on loess, aged in 3,000-liter oak casks, and what a fragrance. Cool, yet overripe damsons; playful, balanced, kinetic yin-tang between cool and warm notes; charm and seriousness, and a charred tertiary finish introduces yet another dimension Zweigelt Tradition 12/750ml AEC-058 Denoting cask-aging, it s (yet) another Ecker red that seems to deliver a jeroboam s worth of fruit in every 750ml bottle. Explosive, like a fireworks of blackberries Austria > Wagram / Ecker

38 Ott region / sub region Wagram / Feuersbrunn VINEYARD AREA 28 hectares ANNUAL PRODUCTION 25,000 cases TOP SITES AND SOIL TYPES Feuersbrunner Spiegel, Feuresbrunner Rosenberg, Engabrunner Stein (loess, Gföhler gneiss, sand, chalk, and red gravel) GRAPE VARIETIES 90% Grüner Veltliner 10% Riesling Farming practices RESPEKT Bernhard made a controversial decision not to bottle any of his three single-vineyard wines in 2014, including the iconic Grüner Veltliner Rosenberg. It s unlikely there will be any vintage-2015 either, as it may have been wiped out by the early-may hailstorm. In a community of wine growers it can be hard to do what you feel is the right thing, because it suggests that others who made different choices were less meticulous than you were. You intended no such thing, of course, but suddenly you are Talked About. At worst you re accused of grandstanding at the expense of other growers your colleagues and friends and all you can do is cultivate such sang froid as you can summon, and reflect ruefully that no good deed goes unpunished. To be fair, some of the chatter I heard was by no means resentful. There were legitimate philosophical questions in play, and more than one reasonable stance a grower might take. Bernhard was mindful that his three Grand Cru wines have displayed a certain stature, a certain size and weight, as befits such important wines. They would be smaller in And you can argue two sides of this question equally plausibly. If the essential flavors of these Crus are visible, can you not suppose that tasters and drinkers and customers will understand that some years are richer than others and that certain years might be rather light? Wine drinkers have learned to ride these distinctions in most classic regions in the world, so why not here? On the other hand, can you really offer these as Grand Crus if they are only moderate in body and weight? Even if their signature flavors are present? If you re considering de-classifying some or most of the material, why stop there? Just skip a year and de-classify all of it. It s perhaps the most principled stance to take. Bernhard wrestled with the issue, and he couldn t help but know that any decision he made would also constitute a public gesture, and would generate public comment, not all of it friendly. At last he wisely let the noise die away, and considered only how he himself would feel, whichever choice he made. And then it was clear. He d sleep better if he didn t bottle those three Crus. It was just that simple, and just that intimate how would this man feel? An unintended consequence is the sudden upward leap in quality of the next-wine-down, the one those three Crus went in to. That bottling won t be this good again! But again, this benefits the customer, and so the decision is even more convincing; we don t ask the client to buy Grand Crus without the stature expected of such wines, and we give the customers a lesser wine that over-delivers. Ott s wines are marked in any case by a certain corpulence. They are not digital and chiseled; they are capacious and generous; Dionysian, not Apollonian. Little, detailed, articulate Crus are just oblique to the basic expression of this estate and the man behind it. Bernhard is reputed to be quite the partier, and I ve no doubt his legend is warranted. But I see him more as the creator of a lovely contained world, similar to that of Nikolaihof, a microcosm of the principled universe Austria > Wagram / Ott 35

39 He s no stranger to mischief though. A sequence of old wines, tasted blind, was entirely the most stunningly weird group of things I d ever tasted. It began with a Fass 4 of 1993, unexpectedly, as few growers save their little or normal wines (and Fass-4 is the one after the entry-level). Then came another 93, this time a cuvée of GV, Riesling and Malvasia (um, what???) and then the fur began to fly. We had a 100% Malvasia from 93 the variety s not supposed to age, remember. And then a 500ml bottle from 1989, a blend of Malvasia and Müller-Thurgau that couldn t possibly be real. But was. Finally there was another Fass 4, from 1990, sporting all of 10.4% alc, and I have never had such fun while my mind was being so thoroughly fucked with. But was this merely mischief? I think not; this was also the fullness of legacy. They were Dad s wines, moments out of the past, not just a sequence of trophies it was what this is, and who we are, all of us, all of it. When you drink these wines, the old ones and the current ones alike, you feel you are participating in something human and something authentic, not just consuming flavor Riesling Von Rotem Schotter + 12/750ml AOT-044 This has that salumeria-earthy sweetness of the Grand Cru Altenberg (Berghaim, Alsace), with the deep savor of roasted beets and the green edge of woodruff. It gets more herbal with air but remains savory. An agreeable oxidative touch gives it a soulful patina Grüner Veltliner Am Berg + 12/750ml AOT-041 Core List Wine Own-fruit plus (organic) fruit bought from colleagues whose vineyards are worked and harvested by Ott s team. It was amazing in 14; super aromas, classic GV lentil and pepper and rhubarb; seems sweet on entry and then visibly tightens up and gets gravelly and taut and hyssop-y, with a fine raspy vigor. He used skin-contact as a natural deacidification. This is different from the 13, but even better Grüner Veltliner Fass 4 12/750ml AOT-042 Euphoric GV fragrance, roastier; the acids are also sinewy (6.9g/l) the effect is a grilled-veggie sweetness with a tart dipping sauce. More spices than pepper, sweet paprika, celeriac; all kinds of mojo in this little dude Grüner Veltliner Der Ott /750ml AOT-043 This cuvée normally includes young-vines from the three Crus, but in 2014 it s all here, and so this wine has some attitude! A 2-class upgrade, it has an erotic minerality and every type of complexity, animal vegetable and mineral, not to mention herbs, a whole garden of herbs in the late-day sunlight, verbena and anise-hyssop all crammed into a veritable syringe of density yet with all of 12.7% alc! One of the great wines of Austria > Wagram / Ott

40 Kremstal & Kamptal Austria s best values are coming from the Kamp and Kremstals. This doesn t mean the cheapest wines; it means the lowest available prices for stellar wines. Austria is often paradoxical in that the more you pay the better the value, e.g., the top Kremstal/Kamptal Grüner Veltliners seem to provide more quality than any other white wine the same money would buy. This may be partly due to the giant shadow cast by the neighboring Wachau, and the determination of the best Kampers and Kremsers to strut their stuff. For the price of really middling Federspiel from a name estate in the Wachau you can get nearly stellar quality in Kammern or Langenlois, and the absolute best from a Nigl or a Gobelsburg is substantially less expensive than their Wachau counterparts. And, every single bit as good. Other than the profound individuality of certain sites (Heiligenstein comes first to mind) there s little of regional style to distinguish these wines from Wachau wines. In fact Willi Bründlmayer told me all three regions were once one big region called WACHAU. Ludwig Hiedler points out Langenlois is warmer than anywhere in the Wachau, and he believes his wines need even more time than theirs do. I had a rather subversive conversation with a Kremstal grower one year, as part of our mutual lamenting of the DAC sillyness. He said I m not really all that sure why we need all these regions at all; Kremstal, Kamptal, Traisental, Wagram... are they really so different? Well wow. I don t often hear growers speaking so blasphemously. It sort of made my mind reel. You know, I said, even the Kremstal is senseless as a single region; the valley itself is one thing but it s very different from the löss terraces along the Danube in terms of exposure and microclimate, to which he agreed. You can make a case for the Wachau between Dürnstein and Spitz, i.e., the gorge, because that area has singular characteristics. But I m not entirely sure how the consumer benefits from having so many different regions whose wines aren t that different from one another. I rather think these things are done by bureaucrats and marketing folks, because they get a kick out of categorizing. Yet a true breakdown of these places based on soil, exposure and microclimate would look very different than the currently demarcated regions. Notes on Gaisberg and Heiligenstein We get to see Heiligenstein from Bründlmayer, and then we ll consider it again along with its next-door neighbor Gaisberg from Schloss Gobelsburg, Ludwig Hiedler and Johannes Hirsch. That might look redundant, but these are two sites equivalent to Chambertin and Clos de Bèze and if you had three suppliers with parcels in both sites, you wouldn t offer them? C mon now! These are the preeminent Riesling Grand Crus of the Kamptal, and they stand among the greatest land on earth in which Riesling is planted. They re contiguous hillsides, each the lower slopes of the Mannhart-hills, but they re dissimilar in crucial ways. Heiligenstein is higher and broader-shouldered (thanks to Peter Schleimer for that image), and probably just the slightest bit warmer. Soils differ also Gaisberg is crystalline, a soil type the Austrians call Gföhler Gneiss which you ll hear the Wachauers talk about also. It s granitic in origin, containing the socalled Glimmerschiefer ( gleaming slate ) which is essentially fractured granite or schist containing little flecks of silica or mica which sparkle in the sun. Gaisberg is the type of site wherein Riesling feels inherent, as if neither culminates without the voice of the other. It gives highly Rieslingy Rieslings. Slim in body, brilliant in berried and mineral nuance, on the cool side of the spectrum. Heiligenstein s soil is said to be unique; so-called Zöbinger Perm, a sedimentary sandstone- conglomerate from the late Paleozoic Age, also containing fine sand and gleaming slatey clays. The site is too steep to have collected löss. The wines of this astounding vineyard are clearly profound, though more difficult and temperamental than Gaisberg s. Great Heiligenstein contains an improbable conciliation of ostensibly disparate elements: citrus-tart against citrus-sweet (lime against papaya), herbal against pitted fruit (woodruff against nectarine), cool against warm (green tea against roasted beets). The wines are more capacious than Gaisberg s, yet not as entirely brilliant; they have more stomach, they are tenors or altos when Gaisberg are sopranos. Which is the better vineyard, you ask? Yes, I answer. Indeed if Riesling got the respect it deserved, both sites would be studied as obsessively and in such detail as great vineyards in the Côte d Or. And if the sky fell we would all catch sparrows. But two things bear mentioning. First, both vineyards (but especially Heiligenstein) have different exposures as they follow the mountainside, and there are distinctions between, say, Zöbinger Heiligenstein and Kammerner Heiligenstein. Second, these sites have many proprietors, and while you can t make mundane wine from either of them, there s unexceptional stuff to be found. Of course, in pages other than these 2015 Austria Kremstal & Kamptal 37

41 Berger region / sub region Kremstal / Gedersdorf VINEYARD AREA 18 hectares ANNUAL PRODUCTION 20,000 cases TOP SITES AND SOIL TYPES Gebling (löss and gravelly löss) ; Steingraben (clay-marl-löss rock) ; Leithen (löss and rock) ; Haid (deep brown earth) GRAPE VARIETIES 70% Grüner Veltliner 15% Zweigelt 9% Riesling 5% Chardonnay, Malvasier, Cabernet Franc, Welschriesling 1% Gelber Muskateller Berger s GrüVe liter is the wine we sell the most of, and at this point it could almost coast. Almost. But the crucial tiny membrane between almost and never is something I never need to worry about. Erich won t forget it. It isn t in his makeup. I can see each year how serious he is to ensure this wine is still performing for me. I mean, it s a modest wine he can t make more than pennies on, yet he cares about it because he s made of caring. I m moved by the humble decency of taking care that this little wine is still good, is always still good. It takes just as much caring as it does to ensure a great wine is indeed great. But the difference is that everyone notices the great wines; you get trophies and awards and tout le monde wants to buy you a beer. Here your caring goes un-remarked upon. I suddenly remembered a thing I hadn t thought of in years. Once I was at a carwash that did some detailing of the outsides and insides, and as I was waiting for my decidedly cheap-ass car, I observed all the very nice expensive cars the guys were working on. But they took the same care with my funky beat up Accord hatchback as they did with the Caddies and BMWs, and I was extremely impressed. Thanks for respecting even my crappy car, I said. Just doin it right, they said. That s it: just doin it right. So while I am very proud and happy to offer and sell this Liter wine, I have to wonder why so few of its customers are curious to see what else Erich can do. If this wine is this good then how must the better wines be? They don t cost all that much more Austria > Kremstal / Berger

42 2014 Grüner Veltliner 12/1000ml ABG-145L Lot-1 (in small print on the label) is cooler than the 13 was, more brassica notes, quite firm, even mineral. The cask-sample I tasted of Lot-2 had riper more banana aromas, fruitier overall; less GV but also more cordial. I ll be in a minority who like Lot-1 better, but I m a purist. By the way, for the many customers of this wine, even after the vicious hailstorm a couple weeks ago, Erich took pains to secure a grape-supply for the 2015 vintage, so this at least will still be available Grüner Veltliner Loessterassen 12/750ml ABG-150 Core List Wine Some exotic aromas over the classic loess profile; super peppery and charred, pulverized stone and gravelly tannin; it s intense, not gracious, with a stony finish. An ambience of botrytis has made it atypical, but it s also very good Grüner Veltliner Gebling + 12/750ml ABG-151 As always this is best in the less ripe years. A dense power-pack of mineral, fueled by its impressive acidity and extract, yet with a sweet juiciness albeit just 2g/l RS the wine basically kicks ass, with a no-nonsense strength Grüner Veltliner Wieland 12/750ml ABG-154 ( + ) New for Erich since last year, it is among the top Crus of the riverfront Kremstal. The alc is around 13.8, the wine is aging in neutral 500-liter cask; it does have maybe 10% botrytis, but here it works with the wine s physio-sweetness; wet cereal and sweet straw, improves into a finish like rice crispy treats; that first botrytis seems to disappear, subsumed into the loessy glow Gelber Muskateller + 12/750ml ABG-146 Always among the best Muscats in my Austria offering, this 14 is really fine; not flowery, not catty; it s almost water-white, with scents of basil oil, pesto; addictively gulpable; mizuna and arugula in some gleam of emerald nage; tiny quantity but wow, what a ridiculous wine Zweigelt + 12/1000ml ABG-144L Delicious! Fatty meat sizzled over hickory smoke; the best-ever vintage of this, and L2 will take us through the year, unless you gobble it up the way you should Blauer Zweigelt Haid 12/750ml ABG-155 Blauer is the official ampelographical name for just-plain Zweigelt. The wine is raspberries and bacon; racy and sweet, the tangiest face of Zweigelt, the point where it just heaps a bucket of berries into your glass while bacon sizzles in the next room Austria > Kremstal / Berger 39

43 Nigl region / sub region Kremstal / Senftenberg VINEYARD AREA 25 hectares ANNUAL PRODUCTION 25,000-30,000 cases TOP SITES AND SOIL TYPES Senftenberger Pellingen, Hochäcker (mica slate, slate) GRAPE VARIETIES 40% Grüner Veltliner 40% Riesling 5% Sauvignon Blanc 5% Gelber Muskateller 10% other varieties If Nigl had a golden age it was probably the decade of the 90s, when each vintage felt guided by a steady hand, and difficult years (96, 98) were easily surmounted. Nigl s the guy you d have wanted to do your brain surgery, his wines were always so incisive and scalpel-fine. And great vintages were abundant; 90 itself, and also 93, 95 (when he was among the very best in all of Austria), 97 and 99. It s not that things went kaput in They just changed. The estate added land, they started building the hotel and restaurant, and a few of the wines went a little rogue. In hot vintages (03, 06) one started to encounter alcohol-bombs, which seemed at odds with Martin Nigl s keen chiseled style. I continued selecting to find his kinds of wines, which always were there to be found, but I had to audition them now. In 2013 we saw a vintage so perfectly aligned with what Nigl s wines essentially are, it s as though Martin had written its script. Or perhaps the gods tapped him on the shoulder at the start of the harvest, saying Take it easy; this year everything will be perfect for you. And so I sat at the tasting table with a beaming Mr. Nigl, remembering what it was like to taste a vintage where everything was superb, in just his particular way. And don t think I didn t peep up. You know, these are really incredibly pure Nigl wines, not those big alcohol things, I said. I can t presume it registered, but I can say that 2014 is markedly successful here, and the wines continue to show the singular virtues of Nigl at his best: clearer than clarity, microsurgically detailed, as if he d used chef-tweezers to arrange the flavors just-so in the glass. And even more happily, there are still a few 13s left to offer, for anyone who missed them last year, or who bought a little, tasted and went WTF didn t I buy more??? Austria > Kremstal / Nigl

44 2014 Rosé 12/750ml AFN Zweigelt-Merlot is rich and fruity, less zippy and gauzy than it s been recently. More raspberries from the Zalto; more acidity and fruit from the tulip. That s me: stem-whisperer Grüner Veltliner Freiheit 12/750ml AFN-246 Core List Wine This is a mini-version of the 13 but as always it s both chiseled and fruity in that loessy wet-cereal way; indeed this 14 is exceptionally focused and inviting Grüner Veltliner Senftenberger Piri + 12/750ml AFN-252 This tends to be the lost middle-child in the range, and I get it but it s still baffling; the wine can be so good. This has a sensational fragrance; ivy, nettles, boxwood, balsam GV with secret sweetness and a fabulous mizuna/arugula cut; plumper from the tulip, racier from the Zalto, and lovely either way Grüner Veltliner Alte Reben + 12/750ml AFN-251 An exceedingly complex loess aroma, really showing all the micro-mineral in this soil. The palate remains adamant and peppery but with lots of succulence to balance; a tight knot of juice-bomb GV, napped with a jus of mineral. All this from the tulip, which was gigantically better than the hapless Zalto, which tore the wine into incoherent shreds Grüner Veltliner Privat Senftenberger Pellingen + ( + ) 6/750ml AFN /375ml AFN-255H 6/1500ml AFN-255M From the Zalto it was racy, complex and mineral; from the (Riedel) tulip it was explosively multi-layered, showing a larger panoply of plant elements in a complex mélange. Zalto a nice, spicy wine. Riedel a near-great wine, more dense, juicy and complete Riesling Dornleiten + 12/750ml AFN-249 Core List Wine This amazed me, offering exponentially more quality than I had any right to expect from a modest 2014; it smells wonderful, a perfect classic Austrian Riesling aroma leading into a cool minerally palate; fragrant woods on the shady morning of a warm day; a little quarry of mineral dust. Wee, perfect, demure but not shy. All this from the Riedel; the Zalto tore it apart and trampled its fruit Riesling Privat Senftenberger Pellingen + + 6/750ml AFN /375ml AFN-258H Stay with me here. There were two components, one from stainless steel, which I tasted in the Zalto, and two from cask which I tasted from the Riedel. The steel wine is good and typical; strong, peppery; violet, iris and mustard greens. The cask wine brings more mid-palate fruit. The intended blend is 2/3 cask to 1/3 tank, and tasting that from the Riedel was very exciting indeed; refined, juicy, spicy and mineral, with the overriding complexity that defines Nigl Riesling Rehberger Goldberg + ( + ) 6/750ml AFN-259 An opening growl of botrytis doesn t persist in the very juicy palate, which also doesn t do its usual caraway-seed thing, or not so emphatically. This 100% amphibolite-grown wine is a fascinating Riesling outlier, recalling the best Chignin-Bergerons or even Rousanne, but neither of those could come close to the crazy mineral yawp of this wine Austria > Kremstal / Nigl 41

45 2014 Gelber Muskateller + 12/750ml AFN-247 Yup, another plus Muscat. Cool, mineral and vetiver; far better from the tulip where its Riesling-like density comes through. Basil juice, hyssop and scree, a little packed wine that stays on the palate a good ten minutes Sauvignon Blanc 12/750ml AFN-254 Fine, delicate, properly varietal but in every way that isn t vulgar; more redcurrant and gooseberry than rampant pyrazine and cat-scratch Brut de Brut Sekt + 6/750ml AFN-260 Disgorged to order and superb! Huge fun, generous, snappy and biscuit; it s extra-brut with 3g/l RS but it reads sweet because of all that crusty sweet hay flavor. Mostly Chardonnay and a little GrüVe Brut de Brut Rosé Sekt 6/750ml AFN-236 It s snappy, rose-hippy and loaded with expressive charm; RS around 4 or 5g/l; tastes a little like Chiquet though saltier and not as refined Riesling Beerenauslese 12/375ml AFN-261 Actually from Pellingen, from the botrytis grapes excluded from the Privat; about 10g/l acidity and 140 g/l RS, it s a fine interesting botrytis wine that shows what it can do when it behaves: exotically orchid-like aromas and a lovely palate of licorice and osmanthus; in every way interesting and appealing. THE REMAINING 13s 2013 Grüner Veltliner Alte Reben + + ( + ) 12/750ml AFN-233 Oh boy a dream fragrance, a bliss fragrance the palate is dense but weightless, grace and serenity cloaked over the cool white shoulders of firm yet supple structure. Loessy sweetness but also loessy pepper. Vaporously long. This is the best Alte Reben in at least a decade Grüner Veltliner Privat Senftenberger Pellingen + ( + ) 6/750ml AFN-239 There s more to this but it s harder to see, at least now. These wines need a few years to unfurl. The aromas are haunting, they pull you in, and there s just more to the palate, some coiled quivering thing waiting to rise and burst. I imagined streamers of tropical fruit, herb-butter, cucumber, rhubarb 2013 Riesling Hochäcker + + ( + ) 6/750ml AFN-240 I had a feeling the fur would fly when we got to this wine. It has the kind of fragrance, you can t be sure you re not dreaming. White lilacs, quince, strawberry, ginger; the palate is the stuff of legend, a superb tactile mineral density below all that floralherbal jazz, and the finish sets up base-camp on your palate Austria > Kremstal / Nigl

46 Bründlmayer region / sub region Kamptal / Langenlois VINEYARD AREA 80 hectares ANNUAL PRODUCTION 33,000 cases TOP SITES AND SOIL TYPES Berg Vogelsang, Loiser Berg, Steinmassel (primary rock) ; Käferberg (marine sediments on primary rock) ; Heiligenstein (Permian rock) ; Lamm (Loam on Permian rock) GRAPE VARIETIES 38% Grüner Veltliner 19% Riesling, 43% Pinot Noir, St. Laurent, Chardonnay and other varieties Farming practices ISO Sustainable at a glance Generally considered Austria s best winery, based on steadily outstanding wines across the entire range. I ll confess it s gotten harder, not easier, to sum this up over the 20 years I ve been visiting here. In recent vintages the texture of Willi s wines has changed. Lately they re showing the calm zen demeanor of Alzinger s wines. Perhaps less explicitly articulate, yet somehow more kind. I don t think it s on purpose, or at least, it may be a collateral effect of something else he set out to do. Willi is remarkably willing to let the wines control their own destinies. In many vintages, one or another of them will escape, such as the insanely peppery 09 Vogelsang GrüVe. I can hear him say We don t seek to shape it; the wine follows its own preferences. Willi refers to me as a classicist, because he notices how I wince at certain extremes, of alcohol perhaps, or botrytis. He in turn is admirably willing to love a wine even if it s what I might call ornery. His sparkling wine is the nearest thing to Champagne of anything that isn t Champagne, yet it doesn t imitate Champagne and only tastes a little like it. His reds are strikingly fragrant, but he seems to prefer them cool, sometimes to a point I perceive as stiff. But this is how he wishes them, lean and stretchy and sinewy. It is very good of him to tolerate my being selective among them. I d call Willi s wines sophisticated and civilized, as long as you know these aren t euphemisms for diffidence. The best ones taste as though they were fond of you. How the wines taste The wines are quite unlike any wines I know, not in their actual flavors, but rather the way flavors are presented to the palate. They are, it might be said, the Stradivarius of wines, distinguishable (and made precious) by the beauty of their tones. Indeed, I always seem to think in sonorous terms for Willi s wines: THE ACOUSTICS of the fruit are perfect, I wrote at one point. You taste class immediately. I often talk about things like class and timbre when I write about Bründlmayer. Class is indefinable. It bears upon a certain simplicity, but it isn t simple. It feels effortless but it isn t. It s richly satisfying but it s hard to say why. It may seem to have little to do with the reasons you buy this wine and not the other one, or with what you choose to drink, but at last you stumble upon it and find you can t resist any more. Class will give you pleasure deeper than joy or amusement. Timbre is the way an instrument sounds, or more accurately, the way a given player makes it sound. The great players seem to release an almost fluid sonorousness from an instrument. It purrs for them. I often receive this image spontaneously when I taste Willi s wines. And I think if you put these things together you arrive at elegance, which is another wine-word you can t deconstruct. When you taste them, you ll find you respond from the richest aspect of your temperament, or else you ll barely respond at all. These wines won t put on a show for you, 2015 Austria > Kamptal / Bründlmayer 43

47 but they will deliver a calm grace and a genial loveliness. There are a lot of wines, but there are a lot of back-vintages, which is exceedingly rare in Austria, and I join Willi in our quixotically doomed attempt to wean buyers away from latest-vintage mania. I write about Willi, because we re contemporaries, but mostly it s his son Vincent who s the face of the estate for you. (And what a face ) Vincent affords me the deference appropriate to a Great-Friend-O-Dad s, not to mention a big-market importer, but sooner or later this will all be his, and we ll see what that means. His own wine the GV from Spiegel is superb, and he has time to grow into the legacy. It is stirring to observe the way this estate has soared the last 3-4 years, as if to issue the gentlest yet most confident reminders that they are indeed stellar. The competition between them and Gobelsburg, in which Bründlmayer is an investor, is loving and mutually admiring, but at one point it began to seem as if Willi were being eclipsed, and his estate seems to have been spurred on, and is making the best wines I have ever seen in twenty years of tasting and representing them. It s an exciting, exhausting visit. There are a lot of wines, and a lot of demanding wines, not because they are difficult, but because they are majestic, searching and insanely complex. THE RED WINES 2011 Zweigelt Reserve + 6/750ml ABY-321 This wine is fantastic, effusive, sweet and almost creamy. It s for sure the rogue pup in the litter, but it s fun to see a Bründlmayer red this frisky and energetic Pinot Noir Cecile 6/750ml ABY Pinot Noir Reserve + + ( + ) 6/750ml ABY-294 The 07 is marrowy and Burgundian and sandalwoody, with lovely PN sweetness; a grown-up wine with nothing to prove, just hale, friendly and reliable. The 11 is more seductive and curvaceous, full of silky polish and smoky length; the charmer and the crowd-pleaser. BUBBLES Sekt Brut Rosé, N.V. 6/750ml ABY-273 Now a cuvée of , deg 12/2014; less berried and more rose-hips; still a Blanc-de-Noir color (in other words, not pink); actually classic and wonderful fruit, in all ways more elegantly mainstream than before. It s coming closer to Champagne, but with more acidity, says Willi. It should convey the sense of Rosé but not the color. It would wreak utter havoc as a ringer in a Champagne tasting. Sekt Brut, N.V. 6/750ml ABY-336 Deg 7/2014, made up of and yup, that s our boy! Austria s most elegant sophisticated fizz. Sekt Extra Brut, N.V. + 6/750ml ABY-272 Like the Brut this has all the Pinots (Blanc, Gris, Noir) Chardonnay, and a little GrüVe; right now this is the best among these; deg 11/2014, the base fruit had higher maturity ( again) to mitigate the very dry style. Wonderful straw and hay, toasted grain, faro cooked with veal stock, roasted carrots, Parmesan, brioche, trumpet mushrooms you get it Austria > Kamptal / Bründlmayer

48 THE PARADE-O-VELTLINERS 2014 Grüner Veltliner Kamptaler Terassen 12/750ml ABY-341 Core List Wine Quite good in 14; brassica, celeriac, verbena; the gravelly acids of the vintage; overall it s agreeably untamed, with 14 expressing as lime and grasses, not botrytis Grüner Veltliner Berg Vogelsang 12/750ml ABY /375ml ABY-346H This is actually better than the 13; rich, balsamy and resinous, even coniferous Grüner Veltliner Loiser Berg + 12/750ml ABY-350 FIRST OFFERING. Tasted last year in cask and wanted to defer a decision, plus there were plenty of wines to offer otherwise. But this is so good I can t pass it up; key-lime, verbena and lovage; the palate has the 13 sweetness and mirabelle; coolly concentrated and classy; balsam and wintergreen; a wine of rivulets, not of waves, but oolong-y orchid-y shady greenness makes it impossible to resist Grüner Veltliner Alte Reben + ( + ) 6/750ml ABY-368 3/1500ml ABY-368M 2012 Grüner Veltliner Alte Reben + + 6/750ml ABY-287 3/1500ml ABY-287M 2011 Grüner Veltliner Alte Reben + + 6/750ml ABY-260 I want you to have a choice, especially you somms, and to have access to at least a couple wines that aren t infantile. That said, the 14 is a highlight of the vintage; a parfait of cherry-tobacco; less forceful and more elegant than usual; some stony fennelly high tones but mostly the murmury middle; deft use of oak; a kindly fellow, but complex and compelling. In general this cuvée is the entrée into the top range at a relatively affordable tariff, and it s the first of the wines to show the effects of wood, though not remotely oaky. The 2012 is a beast, with lots of torque and fire, all voodoo cajun mambo, a courtbouillon of lobster and peppers. If your resto is noisy take this one. The 2011 is perhaps even better though it s close to the 14 stylistically; silky, mineral and articulate, it makes the 12 look a little cloddish which it isn t. The great 2013 will be pulled back for this year, to be offered (maybe) next year or whenever its sweet-spot arrives Grüner Veltliner Vincent s Spiegel + + 6/750ml ABY-306 3/1500ml ABY-306M If I had to choose one GV from this portfolio to get all up in your shit with, saying Really? You think this grape is just trendy?? You don t think it s important??? I d reach for this one. It s doughy, mineral and powerful; amazingly high-toned for its mass; stony, but smooth stone, not gravel and not pulverized; toasty, mint and pink peppercorns; very Burgundian except again, what white Burgundy has this stony magnificence and huge solid core today? And which do you dare to lay down for thirty years?? 2015 Austria > Kamptal / Bründlmayer 45

49 2014 Grüner Veltliner Käferberg + ( + ) 6/750ml ABY-353 3/1500ml ABY-353M Along with its typical Chassagne profile of wet hay, this is unusually mineral ; semolina, almost ginger; it s the most promising young Käferberg I can recall. Though I ve always found it to be the biggest and most international of Willi s GVs, he finds it to be quintessentially Austrian, whereas the Lamm, in his view, is closer to the prevailing mainstream Grüner Veltliner Lamm + + ( + ) 6/750ml ABY-338 3/1500ml ABY-338M Compelling, masterly and mysterious. The rusky sweetness of Lamm is very strong, like wet Wheaties, and the roasty beet strikes sparks against a woodruff-y green. There s also an heirloom-pork roast and Sarawak pepper thing going, and a foamy ginger scallop sashimi thing going there s a lot going in this wine, but where all this motion leads us is something inscrutable, and all the deconstruction you labor to do won t get you there. Though I tried. It s a semolina dumpling catching the juice from a spit-roasting ox, I wrote. You should really be glad you re not me Grüner Veltliner Lamm Auslese 6/375ml ABY-370H Really quite savory, rich, with a woodsy sweetness. A food-wine, or you might use it as you would a barely-sweet Sherry. RIESLINGS 2014 Riesling Kamptaler Terrassen 12/750ml ABY-344 A lean green Riesling machine; snappy, lemon balm; crisp cut, a wine for the Riesling purist Riesling Steinmassel 12/750ml ABY-347 The herbal-mineral wine of an herbal-mineral vintage is a post-doctoral dissertation of every aspect of Riesling neither flower nor fruit. Rich in its way, and balanced in my way Riesling Zöbinger Heiligenstein /750ml ABY /375ml ABY-309H The 13 is the first stirrings of profundity; lemon balm, laurel, balsam and aloe; mineral just pours through in a soaking stream, leaving an exceedingly fine-grained salty residue; the exotic sexy richness is coiled in its corner, visible and waiting Austria > Kamptal / Bründlmayer

50 2014 Riesling Zöbinger Heiligenstein Lyra + 6/750ml ABY-359 3/1500ml ABY-359M 2013 Riesling Zöbinger Heiligenstein Lyra + + 6/750ml ABY-320 3/1500ml ABY-320M The wine is named for the Y-shaped trellising system that increases canopy, thus shading the grapes and increasing photosynthesis. It also looks like the vine is throwing its arms up toward the sun, says Willi (poetically!), who adds, And it shows that you don t need old vines to give great Riesling. I show you the 14 basically for-the-record, as it won t be released until 2016, not to mention any sensible person would jump on the grandiose I m starting to sense that Lyra is a music that s begun to write itself. Willi s early goal was to show the utmost rapture of fruit, as an alpha to the omega of the Alte Reben and its darker gravitas. But for the last three vintages, Lyra has become almost overwhelmingly beautiful. It isn t just fruit any more, and what began as a rapture has changed to a kind of apotheosis of fruit toward a gleaming and complicated divinity. The wine remains ecstatic, but these things are never earned easily. 13 is graceful and massive, dense and weightless, a whirligig of complexity in which a hundred elements glide in an esoteric dance, moving quickly, stepping lightly; it has the focus and the beatific glow of Alzinger (and his wines!), somehow both serene and hyperactively intricate. The 14 Lyra, which we ll see in January 2016, is really green and herbal; it has its usual beaming countenance but in a different key than usual, like a parfait of each green leaf 2013 Riesling Zöbinger Heiligenstein Alte Reben /750ml ABY-339 3/1500ml ABY-339M This was VINARIA S top Riesling of the 2013 vintage in fact Willi had three in the top six places. I still hadn t tasted it when I read that news. I got to glance at it during the January tastings, but only glance. So, now. It is the swirling of its seemingly infinite dimensions that makes this wine supernal. Melting and firmness, steel and sweetness, depth and brilliance, spice and leaf, ecstasy and melancholy, peace and welcome and vigilance and discipline; all you can do is tumble down into the love, it seems to hiss and stream, fathom after fathom Austria > Kamptal / Bründlmayer 47

51 Schloss Gobelsburg region / sub region Kamptal / Gobelsburg VINEYARD AREA 49 hectares ANNUAL PRODUCTION 20,000 cases TOP SITES AND SOIL TYPES Steinsetz (alpine gravel and löss) ; Gaisberg, Renner (primary rock with mica slate) ; Grub (löss) ; Lamm (calcareous loam) ; Heiligenstein (gneiss desert sandstone with volvanic particles) GRAPE VARIETIES 55% Grüner Veltliner 25% Riesling 7% Pinot Noir 7% St. Laurent 7% Zweigelt 2% Merlot Farming practices ISO Sustainable I can t write this into a little capsule. It won t let itself be written that way. So again I beg your patience, and ask for 2-3 minutes to tell you a story I know you should hear. Peter Schleimer and I were having dinner one night, and we ordered Gobelsburg s 2005 Grüner Veltliner Tradition, and it was lovely, and got us talking. Peter loves it too, as do many of his colleagues at VINARIA (the excellent wine magazine he heads up), and so we wondered why the idea hadn t seemed to spread to other estates. A few days later Johannes Hirsch was thinking out loud, wondering what it might be like to return to the old cellar instead of the brand-new one he built a few years ago, and there s a general sense somewhere between curiosity and yearning about the old ways or the Old Ways but best I can tell Michi Moosbrugger s the only man to actually make a wine along those lines. (Except of course for Nikolaihof, all of whose wines are this way.) It s important to say the Tradition bottling is neither a pastiche nor even really a tribute. It arises from a wish to enter the spirit of the vintners of 100 years ago, before the possibilities of technology created choices they couldn t have imagined. What was their relationship to their land, to their grapes? And how did they conceive of wine? The prime motivator for these thoughts arose during the tasting of the old wines in the estate s cellar, Michi begins. Though this was done in order to determine what these old wines might be worth, the experience set a range of thoughts in motion. Afterward I grew curious about the winemaking practices of the 50s and 60s, and spoke with Father Bertrand as well as the cellarmaster of those days. I felt that to understand those practices would help me better to understand what we re doing today. I began to form the theory that, as more technological possibilities existed and were used, the wines became more uniform. The opposite possibility was also to be considered; less technology meant more variable wines. But these were just my starting-out hypotheses, and I m not at all certain absolute answers are to be found. I think in order to begin to understand the wines of the pre-technological era, you have to try and understand the ideas behind them. The purpose in those days was to school the wines, what the French still call elevage, to raise the wines, or bring them up. It thus followed that for each wine there was an Ideal, and the job of the cellarmaster was to realize these Ideals in the pure Platonic sense. Only when the Ideal is reached is the wine ready to be appreciated and sold. Naturally there was no recipe, but there was a sense of finding the proper moment in time and in the wine s natural oxidation, and these things were determined empirically and by feel. It s a highly dynamic system, with differences from cask to cask, vintage to vintage, grape to grape. Those people presumed that wine had to develop and expand in oxygen, entirely contrary to what we think today, that we have to protect it from oxygen at all costs. But what is this Ideal? And is it some Austria > Kamptal / Schloss Gobelsburg

52 thing a priori, or is it of necessity limited by the contingencies of possibility? In order to go deeper into these questions, Michi set about to make a wine as it would have been made between the end of the Franco-Prussian war and the start of World War 1. The results are offered below. It s quite different from drinking the normal GrüVe Renner the Tradition comes from that vineyard. I adore the Renner; it s one of my favorite GrüVes, but in its modern way it seems to stride right at you, outstretched hand, big smile, saying I m having a great day; let me tell you why! But drinking the Tradition is like walking in your front door, and your beloved is listening to music, and she looks at you and you see she s been crying. She doesn t have to say a word. But something has happened, and it saturates the room, and then her, and then you. There s a diligence and a curiosity about Michi that I admire very much. His wines don t just happen. He has a guiding idea for all of them, and his approach is deeply craftsmanlike. He also seems to think in what I might call Monk-time (and I don t mean Thelonious, though that s in the mix also) in that his vision includes a tactile connection to the past and future, and he s not making items to obtain this score this year. His contemporary wines are hued a little differently than those of Bründlmayer, the style to which he s most closely related. Both families of wines are detailed and pixilated, but Willi s are more silvery and Michi s are more color-saturated, and specifically more green. They radiate clarity, candor and vitality, and they ll flirt with you a little. The old-school wines what I d call the ancient wines are not entirely under the control of their host. They began more redolent and studiedly woodsy, but they ve probed deeper layers of late, and I have the sense they are gradually unlocking mysteries so obscure that none of us knew they were there. All of this is to say that I am moved by the sight of a serious conscientious man who is making the world more beautiful. It is always stirring to witness such care. And of course, the ordinary concerns of the world are duly dispatched, and we spend time talking about numbers and labels and the needs of the day. But I wonder, after I leave, what goes through Michi s mind about the wines. He tastes them all along with us. I taste and say what I have to say. I always drive away in a kind of thrill, and a little guilty; I alight upon a year s work like a migrating bird, I sit on my branch and sing and preen and then I fly off again. He puts the bottles back in the fridge, he knows I loved them (I couldn t hide it even if I wanted to), and there it was: his work. FIZZZZZZZZZZZ Brut Reserve, N.V. 12/750ml AZZ-070 As always mostly GV with little bits of Riesling and SL-PN. It s now assembled from 2010 with 2009 reserve wine, and it s beautifully salty, angular and herbal; classy, with a really clinging length on the side-palate; there s a tic of phenol (from 10) but the base wine is perhaps the most interesting yet deployed Brut R.D. 6/750ml AZZ-291 I didn t taste it; I only know it ll be the next one, and that the 2001 was magical, so I m offering it sight-unseen and I know I ll be glad that I did. RED WINES These are the furthest thing from an adjunct or an afterthought. Red wines have a centuries-old history as part of the Cistercian tradition, wherever these monks had their monasteries. That said, the Kamptal would seem to be pre-ordained for white wine production, though the new climate era has reintroduced a community of reds not just viable, but actively delicious Zweigelt (Schlosskellerei Gobelsburg label) 12/750ml AZZ-214 As always cool and scrupulous, maybe even more so in 13; delicate, dusty, blackberries, and an incipient second layer of cherry tobacco and marrowy richness. Not merely a fruity wine; rather, a miniature version of a serious wine. By the way, don t mind the confusing business about labeling for the second wines whether Gobelsburger or Domain Gobelsburg or (now) Schlosskellerei Gobelsburg. It has to do with arcane bureaucratic niceties and with the DAC business, and some functionary somewhere will always find a way to make growers lives miserable. But you re getting the wine you always got, and I don t envy this (or any) estate subject to all this nonsense Austria > Kamptal / Schloss Gobelsburg 49

53 2012 St. Laurent Reserve + 6/750ml AZZ Pinot Noir Reserve + + 6/750ml AZZ Zweigelt Reserve + 6/750ml AZZ- 288 Friend and customer; just when you started to trust me, just when you began to feel safe because I wouldn t ask you to do anything too effing strange, sorry Because I think you should buy all three of these wines, as a trilogy, because vintages like 2012 don t show up very often, and because these are sincerely beautiful wines, and because they make the most sense as a tandem, because the whole exceeds the sum of its parts. And because these are grown-up wines that won t diddle you with specious power or spurious point-juju, but might just remind you of the abiding and deepest reasons you started to drink wine in the first place. Taste them and be reminded how crucial texture is in the pleasure a wine can bring. The St Laurent was known by its site-name Haidegrund, which nobody knew, and so it made sense to indicate its stature with a word we all know, by which we understand it is extraordinary. It has a wonderful elegant aroma of plums and oxtail soup, tobacco, and the wildness of the open land. The palate is sweetly stern, deftly woody, long and vinous, with notes of wild game and bouquet-garni a fantastic SL! Roundly solid paradoxical in many ways, among them its polished rusticity. And as the finish slowly fades, the last thing to remain are the herbs. The Pinot Noir, formerly known as Alte Haide, has an absolute sweetheart fragrance, as if we d time-traveled to Chambolle, at least until those herbs arrive again, you wonder where they come from. Seductive, graceful, deft and loving, this wine has it all; strong yet pliant, structured and juicy; honestly all you can say is it s a noble glowing lady, and I don t recall a better PN, ever, from Austria. The Zweigelt arose from Michi s curiosity; what is this variety capable of if it s treated with the same regard and given the same TLC as the (ostensibly) more important grapes? It has, again, the 2012 glow and sweetness as well as its structure, with the whole-basket-of-berries thing Zweigelt does, but it s elegant, wolfishly delicious, threading the needle between hedonism and seriousness, both admirable and lovable. GRUNER VELTLINERS 2014 Grüner Veltliner (Schlosskellerei Gobelsburg) + 12/750ml AZZ-231 Core List Wine It is, amazingly, as good as the 13 and yet entirely different; much fruitier in 14; super lentilly and fennely and overtly expressive; sweet entry and a firm finish; somewhat like an 09 but with more hyssop; lingering and concentrated Grüner Veltliner Steinsetz + 12/750ml AZZ-275 Core List Wine 12/375ml AZZ-275H Core List Wine This ever-deepening wine has a lysergic moment in 14; high-toned, almost hoppy aroma, with notes of lima beans and dill; picked the 2nd week in November; the palate is wonderfully juicy, like extra-virgin grapeseed oil; the fruit is sweet and the umami is ludicrously spicy. The site sits on a plateau on ancient Danube riverbed stones, and for many years it was radishy and stinging, as if it were fined with scree and stirred with a peppermint stick. A little of that character still remains, but the older vines (now around 15) have sunk roots deep enough to reach the aquifer, and the wines too are deeper Austria > Kamptal / Schloss Gobelsburg

54 2014 Grüner Veltliner Renner + + ( + ) 6/750ml AZZ-277 The site lies at the foot of the Gaisberg on eroded gneiss with a high proportion of paragneiss, mica and amphibolite, under a topsoil layer of loess. So you get a lot of fruit and a lot of minerality and a lot of ripeness and a heaving TON of value-for-money. It was the best GV I tasted from 2014, though part of me wonders whether it was simply more available to the palate than the famously tardy Lamm. We shall see. Meanwhile, this is shimmeringly, phosphorescently, gorgeously mineral. Can this mineral flavor be delicious. Seductive? Oh baby! It s not without fruit; you have corn and spring-onion here, fritters and beigneits, violets and hyacinth; it has both impressive mass and the most filigree possible detail. What a wine!! 2014 Grüner Veltliner Lamm + + 6/750ml AZZ /375ml AZZ-278H Sensational fragrance! Richly, sweetly LAMM. The palate is taut, powerful, markedly spicy; it s the 2006 this most resembles yet the alc is much lower, between %. Early days yet for this. Lamm as a rule is buckwheat-y, rusky, savory but not thick, like a vegetable-veal stock with barley, yet oddly also like lamb itself. ( Lamm doesn t mean lamb, but is rather a dialect word for loam. ) It is a great wine though virtually without fruit per se. Its poise of gloss and power, intensity and outline, mass and transparency are emblems of the paradox without which no wine is truly great Grüner Veltliner Tradition /750ml AZZ-283 6/1500ml AZZ-283M This struck me as the best since the all-time-great 2008, though I see I also assigned three plusses to the I get passionate. It s markedly sleek for this wine; you feel it would need another 3-4 years in cask to even start feeling tertiary. No, I m not blinded by passion; this is life-altering wine, perhaps the best GV I have ever had, a Montrachet among GVs. At first heartrendingly slim and delicate, and then the power and spiciness grows and swells, and all with the baked doughy sweetness of bread you re just pulling from the oven. RIESLINGS 2014 Riesling Schlosskellerei Gobelsburg 12/750ml AZZ-232 Lovely fragrance, verbena and a kind of charming herbal funk; a bit of the ambient-botrytis of 14 is here, and the overall effect is drier and twiggier than its GV sibling Riesling Heiligenstein 6/750ml AZZ-281 Both this and the Gaisberg Grand Crus were crouching behind a veil of botrytis, and were hard to read. There s an interesting wine below the shroud, and if any wine deserves the benefit of my puny doubts, it s this one. Yet, we must wait and see Riesling Tradition + + ( + ) 6/750ml AZZ-282 6/1500ml AZZ-282M I think that the basic material in this case old-vines Gaisberg was so precise and so expressive in 2013 that it has (up to now) resisted the tertiary development of the old-school cellar regime. Which is to say, the wine is sensationally beautiful, a supernal thing in the making, with each facet of great Gaisberg but just the bare beginnings of the warm sweet woodsy thing these wines are meant to do. It is brilliant, but is brilliance what we seek from this wine? Perhaps 13 will simply be an outlier in the sequence, or maybe it holds reserves of something currently obscure. Holding its breath and waiting. I am vehemently curious to taste it again 2015 Austria > Kamptal / Schloss Gobelsburg 51

55 Hiedler region / sub region Kamptal / Langenlois VINEYARD AREA 28 hectares ANNUAL PRODUCTION 16,500 cases TOP SITES AND SOIL TYPES Thal (sandy löss and loam) ; Kittmannsberg, Spiegel (löss) ; Steinhaus (gneiss with amphibolite) ; Heiligenstein, Gaisberg (sandy weathered soils) GRAPE VARIETIES 63% Grüner Veltliner 15% Riesling 6% Chardonnay 6% Weissburgunder, Pinot Blanc 2% Sauvignon Blanc 8% Zweigelt, Blauburgunder, St. Laurent, Sangiovese at a glance Don t like sqeaky-clean, reductive wines? Step right up! Amazing values for chewy, ample wines with old-fashioned meat on em. They are among the highlights in every vintage. How the wines taste Satisfying, is how they taste! Look, I adore those filigree delineated wines, you know I do, but after five days of tasting them it starts to feel like work. They demand study. With the first hit-o-hiedler the palate sits up with a jolt: Is there a party? Sure feels like it! Yet within their succulent density is all the complexity you could wish for. They re the thinking-man s wine porno! After all these properly modern scrupulously correct wines, welcome to the crazy-hippy world of Ludwig Hiedler. Though it wouldn t be right to suggest it s anything-goes at Hiedler; in fact the wines and the man are entirely disciplined within the context in which he prefers to operate. Which is different than the others. And when you hear about it you might expect the wines to be much more untamed and atavistic than in fact they are. In fact what s striking here is how clear, refined and focused they are, while emphasizing a round rich vinosity in place of chiseled primary fruit. (It also suggests we are sometimes perhaps too forgiving of the flaws in some natural wines, as Hiedler s are as natural as they come, and they are not flawed ) At some point with his wine in my glass I had a flickering thought that this was precisely the kind of wine I most loved to drink, and that most people ought to love to drink; vivid and forthright, frisky and yet with substance, solid and strong yet still drinkable. And not so digitally detailed that you feel you have to study its every nuance with each and every sip. There is something incredibly hale about Hiedler s wines. They seem to glow with health and vitality. Things are astir at Weingut Hiedler, and in the loveliest possible way: They are slowing down. The first organic experiments are happening, in the sites Thal and Kittmannsberg. And for the past several years now Ludwig has done only spontaneous fermentations without enzymes or even SO 2, and without temperature control. Part of this is Ludwig s innate restlessness, and another part is his desire to eschew the established orthodoxies. I am a restless spirit, said Ludwig Hiedler; I always want another angle to improve the wines. Hiedler likes extract most of all. It s the single most important facet of wine, he says. That s why I don t believe in the whole-cluster pressing, because you lose too much extract. Plus, he added with a merry gleam, I like to be different from the others! Austria > Kamptal / Hiedler

56 2014 Grüner Veltliner Loess 12/750ml AHL-203 Core List Wine It s discreet, light and lentilly this year, with a hint of botrytis in the aromas. Otherwise meadow-y and grainy, crescendoing into a grippy finish, but overall a sweet-natured demure wine Grüner Veltliner Thal 12/750ml AHL-204 Core List Wine The site is loess and red sand, and the vines are venerable. It is the classic Hiedler wine and usually shows the juicy Viognier side of GV. The 14 has a corner, an elbow of botrytis, not atypical for him, or it; roasted red peppers, more enveloping than focused, though I tasted a cask sample that ll be shaped and focused by bottling. And most curiously, a pour from the bottom of the bottle is tighter and shows more correctly. So, um????? 2014 Grüner Veltliner Kitmannsberg + 12/750ml AHL-208 The artist formerly known as Novemberlese, and then as simply November, both of which have been used by other growers also, and so it reverts back to its actual site name. It has always been the blue-eyed child in a family of brown-eyes, a kind of neo-classical firm dignified wine, and this 14 is another iron monument to loess; a puff-pastry sweetness, like phyllo dough you left in the oven twenty seconds too long; boxwood and iris, sorrel and summer savory, salt and chile threads; earnest and less obdurate than in a normal year, but still firm and strong, like Delphic columns coated in cream. The actual soil is limestonebearing loamy sandy silt Grüner Veltliner Maximum 6/750ml AHL-206 For Ludwig these wines represent the outermost limits of a grape s expressiveness rendered in his particular idiom. It s an attractive proposition, and was especially attractive 15 years ago when most of these wines arrived below 14% alc. He and I have an affectionate disagreement on these questions. And so this 13 is a voluptuous, sexy-pants wine, aged over a year in a new acacia cask. It s very Chassagne, and is heady and alcoholic but neither coarse nor ungainly because it is so creamy. The power is elegantly dispersed, albeit the fruit is, to my particular taste, overstated. But bear in mind that I m in the minority who do not relish mezzo-forté wines, and if your taste is other than mine, this kind of wine makes you wanna jump and shout Riesling Urgestein 12/750ml AHL-207 Core List Wine Notably firmer than the GVs; all snap peas and balsam, quite impressive if just a little elusive after the first attack. But! Ten minutes in the glass helped it find its green groove, and showed all the balsam and hyssop of this super cool Riesling. I showed it to a wait staff in Boston recently, and no one had ever tasted anything like it, or ever supposed there could be anything like it. This is Riesling?? Ah yup Riesling Steinhaus + 12/750ml AHL-209 The site is steep, with myriad little terraces, amphibolite and gneiss higher up, loess lower down, giving a Riesling for people who love Scheurebe. The 14 is lavish with wintergreen and lime-blossom, intricately mineral and intricately herbal; lemon balm and mint; it s not without botrytis but here it seems to help, adding a blatant ore in which the fresh citrics and herbs are anchored together Riesling Gaisberg + ( + ) 6/750ml AHL-210 Gaisberg always tastes white to me, like white teas and white flowers, or like clotted cream strewn with blueberries. Lemon-blossom aromas also, and this sometimes cerebral or aloof Riesling is a blast of cream and juiciness in 14. I thought of Pechstein s flowers-and-stones and Jesuitengarten s violet-y firmness, and yet the finish here is dark, ending with adamant mineral Austria > Kamptal / Hiedler 53

57 2014 Riesling Heiligenstein 6/750ml AHL-211 This is a turbulent youth, showing all the wizard-smoke of the site but still working out its botrytis issues. It seems to show more of the exotics and less of the cool notes right now, but it s early days Riesling Maximum 6/750ml AHL-212 First offering. It begins with the utter-riesling-glory scent of That s a fine start! It then shows everything great about 2013 ratcheted up to a degree some will find overwhelming, and others like silly me will find wearisome, like Don t keep arguing, I m already convinced. The fragrance is really gorgeous, overripe mirabelles and sweet grain. It s also in its way a very moving wine because it s the deep expression of the core of a man, this roasted marrow of Riesling that conveys such a unity of soul and drink. A SMALL THOUGHT, A LARGE GRATEFULNESS Imagine if you sold Burgundy and you had multiple suppliers for Chambertin, Musigny, and Richebourg. You d be one very happy camper. So, well, OK; then imagine how I feel having so many interpreters of three of the greatest vineyards in Europe. I have LAMM Grüner Veltliner from Bründlmayer, Gobelsburg and Hirsch. I have GAISBERG Riesling from Hiedler, Hirsch and Gobelsburg. And I have HEILIGENSTEIN Riesling from Hiedler, Hirsch, Gobelsburg and Bründlmayer. Gifts are showered upon me. My nipples explode with delight! I am halcyon, jocund and effulgent. I will gladly come to your town and taste these wines as parallels with you and your customers. All you need to do is, buy them all! Austria > Kamptal / Hiedler

58 Hirsch region / sub region Kamptal / Kammern VINEYARD AREA 31 hectares ANNUAL PRODUCTION 12,500 cases TOP SITES AND SOIL TYPES Kammerner Lamm, Zöbinger Gaisberg, Zöbinger Heiligenstein (löss, eroded mica slate topped with brown soil, eroded primary rock with desert sands and volcanic particles) GRAPE VARIETIES 65% Grüner Veltliner 35% Riesling Hannes seems to have had an especially successful vintage in 2014, though like everyone he winces to remember how taxing it was to harvest. But it does appear that the earlier ripening possible with bio-dynamics played into the cleaner fruit he was able to pick days before many of the others. The wines were predictably immature, and I hedged my plusses accordingly, but it was one of the best collections I saw. In the top range of Kamptal producers, Hirsch is the moving target. The others are all pretty much settled in to their identities, even (or especially) Hiedler the outlier. Hirsch is the shape-shifter, and I think this arises from an aspect of his temperament whereby he refuses all rote and routine, and everything is challenged all the time. If you add the various issues pertaining to his conversion to bio-dynamism over the last six years, you get an estate where the wines really do almost make themselves. The most dramatic examples of this were the two extraordinary vintages of single-vineyard Riesling that wouldn t ferment dry, and which were bottled as they were. These 07s and 08s are every bit the masterpieces I said they were I have them in my cellar and they move me to my depths each time. Their celestial qualities, and Johannes courage in letting them be, are why he was my winery of the vintage two years running. And yet opinions differed. My former colleague Kevin Pike believed their existence sent a mixed message, (I don t know whether he actually liked the wines.) and created a dis- continuity of identity that damaged the estate commercially. I m such an idealist, I cannot fathom how wines as beautiful as those wines were could possibly damage anything. All they did was make my heart soar. Yet if people expect a certain type of wine from Austria, they must have it or they become bemused. In any case, the wines have since been predictably dry. But Hirsch seems to eschew predictability almost as a statement of principle. His wines are lower in alcohol than other grower s wines, possibly because bio-dynamically grown grapes are often physiologically ripe with less potential alcohol than conventional grapes. But also because Hannes likes them that way. This means that a certain alcoholic torque may be noticeably absent, even from his big wines. He also likes to leave them on their lees well into the following year. I suspect there s a sweet spot where lees and fruit combine perfectly, and if you miss it then your wine loses fruit which may or may not be recovered. Losing fruit isn t a categorical mishap, of course, but leesy wines are less direct. An offering of Hirsch these days consists of whichever of the current vintage is ready to offer, plus anything still available and showing well from previous years. I like that it s not confined to the latest vintage! and that the wines have a chance to inhale and exhale. It respects them, and us Austria > Kamptal / Hirsch 55

59 2014 Grüner Veltliner Number /750ml AWH-134 The label will change to something less whimsical, as Hannes started to feel it was too supermarket-y, and it will also stay the same each year. End of an era, alas, though I seem to have been the only guy who liked those silly funny labels and liked that they changed every year. If I ever am asked to guest-lecture for some class in marketing, I will ask the eager students to take extremely careful note of each thing I say, every pearl of genius I strew upon them, every suggestion and every holy principle and then do precisely the opposite. I am a little waif among wiser elders who have better suits than I do. I am one.wrong.dude. when it comes to marketing. I shall retreat proudly though! Even as they revoke my parking permit This wine has a schwe-e-e-et aroma; total classic GV at its most winning and forthcoming oh man, this is ridiculous quality for this echelon, the legume-lentil GV with loads of loessy charm. It is the BEST WINE IN ITS CATEGORY IN 2014, and an amazing piece of work Grüner Veltliner Heiligenstein 12/750ml AWH /375ml AWH-139H I put it in quotes because it is actually (and inexplicably) the general-site, not the single-site, and to try to explain it would involve all the Talmudic intricacy of bureaucratic thought or, thought. In any case, beginning with vintage-2015 this wine will be known as Kammern, and will thus take its more explicable place as a village-wine. It has always been the perfect medium-weight GV, and this 14 is a pristine version of this perennially tasty fellow. That s all. But consider: how many times have I used a word like pristine to describe a 14 wine? 2014 Grüner Veltliner Lamm 12/750ml AWH-142 ( + ) The other single-vineyard wines (Renner, Grub) were in various stages of young wine funk, but this one is both hugely promising and already good in a kind of veal-stock way. It won t appear until January 2016, but I want it on-record as looking like a highlight of Riesling Zöbing 12/750ml AWH-140 Core List Wine The village-wine, basically young vines from the two Crus. It s clean, nubby and mineral in 14; iris-y but less riotously floralsweet than, say, the 13 was; it needs air, and after a few minutes the wisteria scents started appearing, and the minerality clarified. ( NOTE: BOTH GAISBERG AND HEILIGENSTEIN SHOWED PROMISE BUT NEITHER COULD BE DEFINITIVELY ASSESSED. AS THERE ARE EARLIER VINTAGES AVAILABLE, I LL OPT TO OFFER THOSE ON THE PRINCIPLE OF SHOWING THE BEST- POSSIBLE-WINE FOR RIGHT NOW, WITH THE LUXURY OF ACTUALLY BEING ABLE TO GET IT.) Austria > Kamptal / Hirsch

60 EARLIER VINTAges 2013 Grüner Veltliner Renner + 12/750ml AWH-120 3/1500ml AWH-120M It s mineral! Oleander and scree; salty grip focused to a keen point yet also wholly dispersed over the sides of the palate. Earthier and less hi-def than Gobelsburg s; more rocks-and-twigs but also analog and warm. Gets better month by month Grüner Veltliner Grub 12/750ml AWH-125 3/1500ml AWH-125M This is a heat-trap in the declivity between the Gaisberg and Heiligenstein hills, and it gives a very meaty wine, often too meaty for me. Gobelsburg offers it also, and I show you maybe one in three vintages. This one is a big, dense boulder of minerality, stocky and brooding. It has some of the power of the 2003 Lamm, and is loaded with brown-bread and sorghum. More Wachau than Kamptal, but curiously compelling Grüner Veltliner Lamm + ( + ) 12/750ml AWH-122 A superb vintage of this; powerful yet light on its feet. Still unfurling (as Lamm ought to) it has clarity and momentum along with Hirsch s emphasis on drinkability Grüner Veltliner Lamm + 12/750ml AWH-097 Beautiful to start drinking now; serious, grainy, with highly delineated mineral Riesling Gaisberg + ( + ) 12/750ml AWH /375ml AWH-123H 3/1500ml AWH-123M This is in the subdued state following its pre-bottling giddiness, but it s serious and expressive and refined. A blushing bride of iris and white tea with a firm core of menthol and spice and an even firmer core of deep compact mineral Riesling Heiligenstein /750ml AWH-124 3/1500ml AWH-124M As always compared to Gaisberg this is more Cajun and abandoned and entirely more untamed, but it s coming on wonderfully, with lavish mineral, salts and fruit-sweetness. I mean, really 2013! Riesling! Heiligenstein! What are you waiting for?? 2011 Riesling Gaisberg /750ml AWH /375ml AWH-095H My entire note consists of the words OFFER THIS! Hence, I do Austria > Kamptal / Hirsch 57

61 Wachau I think my favorite thing of all about the Wachau is the idyllic Landhaus Bacher in Mautern, where I like to stay when I m there. You feel very cared-for. The rooms are dear without being either stultifyingly luxurious or too adorably precious. The restaurant is just a perfect joy; lovely, radiant food, nothing show-offy, just purity, vitality. The amazing Johanna, who never seems to sleep, sets the tone for utterly exquisite service, and is somehow there the next morning to coax you into reluctant consciousness with her almost unbearable gaiety. The restaurant s wine list is an Aladdin s cave of treasures from the Wachau and its neighbors. And yet, as I perused it night after night I found myself more drawn to the wines of the Kamptal and Kremstal, which simply offered more quality-per-dollar than the magnificently unreasonable Wachau. Why magnificent? Because the region is stupendously beautiful and the best wines are the pinnacles of Austrian wines. Why unreasonable? Because there s too much business chasing too little truly great wine. The Wachau is a wonderful place to be a tourist, a gourmand, a wine-geek, but it s an awkward place to do business. The greatest Wachau wine will distinguish itself from its neighbors in the Kamptal or Kremstal the way great Côte de Nuits does from Côte de Beaune; all things being equal, Wachau wines are simply weightier. The best of them, though, are distressingly scarce, and prone to be pricey, especially at lesser levels of ripeness. The great wines are worth whatever one can afford to pay for them, but the smaller wines often strike me as dubious values. And one must be quite selective. There s a large disparity between a few superb properties and the general run of rather ordinary vintners who seem content to coast in the slipstream of the region s renown. A subversive thought came to me. Since the problem with most Federspiels are that they re too flaccid and taste incomplete, and the concomitant problem with many Smaragds is that they re annoyingly overripe and brutishly heavy, why separate them into two unsatisfactory categories, but instead, why not just make one wine of say 13% alc instead of one with 12% and the other with 14.5%? You could average the price, and if you absolutely had to, you could make a few Austria Wachau body-builder types just to appease your throbbing manhood. I say this semi-facetiously, but it s actually not a bad idea. Perhaps it could be applied only to the top Crus, and the lesser sites can go on making the lesser wines they re making now. Not that any of this could ever happen, but I m just the idiot to propose it! We can attack it just as soon as we ve rid the world of DAC. The Danube cuts a gorge through a range of hills that can truly be called rugged. Vineyards are everywhere the sun shines, along valley floors on loamy sand soils, gradually sloping upward over löss deposits and finally climbing steep horizontal terraces of Urgestein once again, the primary rock soil containing gneiss, schist and granite, often ferrous (which may account for the ore thing I often use in tasting notes).

62 Alzinger region / sub region Wachau / Unterloiben VINEYARD AREA 10 hectares ANNUAL PRODUCTION 6,250 cases TOP SITES AND SOIL TYPES Mühlpoint (clay mixed with gneiss) ; Liebenberg (mica schist) ; Hollerin (gneiss mixed with löss and loam) ; Loibenberg, Steinertal (weathered gneiss) GRAPE VARIETIES 55% Grüner Veltliner 45% Riesling Leo came over to visit us (and many of you) in January, which he didn t need to do. We receive an allocation from him, we take it all and sell it all, and there isn t by any means enough. So he needn t visit in order to grow his business; this incredibly sweet guy came over because he wanted to meet you, wanted to thank you, wanted to know the market and how his wines were used. If you want to even begin to understand the ethereal kindliness that inhabits these wines, start by considering the man. He did say the vintage had been a struggle, and that he d made only one Smaragd, but that he was increasingly happy with what he did make, and besides, after so many ripe years in a row, why be irked when the new one was lighter? Yes, true. I heard murmurings about the paucity of Smaragd from Alzinger in 2014, but I really don t understand them. Is it the manifest destiny of the Wachau and its growers to make powerhouse wines every single year? Especially when so many of those wines are yawping out 14% and higher alcohol, complete with botrytis? When the Smaragd category was first established it began at 12.6% alcohol, and that s what a lot of them had. Now Alzinger has to apologize for a mere Federspiel they bottled with 12.8%, and this makes very little sense to me. The point, at least to my feeble mind, is to make the wine the vintage gives, rather than to insist on forcing your hapless wine to assume some sort of bellowing power regardless of conditions. Is the Wachau really supposed to become the Chateauneuf-du-Pape of Austria? I am very happy with Alzinger s 14s, though as is typical for the vintage the GVs are better than the Rieslings. And I want to use the example of this vintage to compel the question; should we really demand or presume the Wachau must supply an endless stream of big swollen wines exceeding 14% alc? I think that the failures of the harvest of 14 came from chasing that standard not as a gift of nature but as an Icon that has to be worshipped. In any case, if Alzinger had made another vintage as exquisite as 2013 just one year later, I think it would have killed me. But as always these are another kind of great wine, not the kind that pins you to the chair, nor the kind that pick you up and hurl you around, nor the kind that get in your face saying Now see here! while you succumb to their greatness. These wines are the purest kind of love and solace, powerfully expressive yet mostly gentle wines, the kind that you might believe can release oxytocin into your body, they deliver such affirming calm. I drank a bottle of F.X. Pichler s 2002 Steinertal Riesling one night, and it was as marvelous as I expected it to be. I ve long admired the glossy power of those wines at their best. Yet when I looked at the words I was using to discuss it it was showing well, it performed beautifully I realize I felt like I was an audience for the wine, that I was separate from it in some crucial way. Perhaps this has everything to do with me, and it s by no means a slam on a highly laudable wine, but when I drink Alzinger s wine I have no such feeling. With them I feel included, roused, affectionate; I feel a thing akin to love. The two top sites are among the greatest Grand Crus of the Wachau, and they 2015 Austria > Wachau / Alzinger 59

63 are polar opposites in style. The LOIBEN- BERG is as mighty in the glass as it looks on the huge terraced hillside, and yet for a powerwine it isn t at all brutish. The wines, whether Riesling or GrüVe, are tropical and exotic, yet they manage an uncanny light-footedness and refinement. I suspect a synesthesiac would taste yellows and oranges in the wines. Loibenberg is a summer day with peaches ripening on the tree, but it s breezy and fresh, not sultry and thick. STEINERTAL is the coolest among the Loiben Crus, both actually and metaphorically. It s small and hidden back 5.5 hectares, divided in three sections, with only four proprietors I know of (one of whom has Muskateller planted; someone get me that to taste), of whom Alzinger owns the largest share. It s more or less the first terraces you see if you re driving in from the east and the Kremstal; indeed it s sheltered by the craggy cliff of the Pfaffenberg. Steinertal makes marked wine, green flavors, as estoteric as Loibenberg but in another register of nuances; green teas, herbs, limes, heirloom apples, often a naked minerality. It seems predestined for Riesling, and even Alzinger s splendid GrüVe can be mistaken for Riesling (at least until you taste the actual Riesling alongside). You could construct a fanciful vision of Steinertal taking a trip to the Saar and returning with the thought I want to make wines like those wines Grüner Veltliner Frauenweingarten Federspiel 12/750ml ALA-145 Well here s a lovable little dickens! Charming, light; good fruit but with a snappy minty high note, lovely in the tulip, wrenched apart by the Zalto Grüner Veltliner Mühlpoint Federspiel + 12/750ml ALA-146 A little wine with big density, tactile with extract, scree, rock-dust; more boxwood than green bean (though that too is there), but it s the clarity and mineral authority so impressive here Grüner Veltliner Steinertal Federspiel /750ml ALA-147 By alcohol (12.8, though the label will say 12.5) you could have argued for Smaragd, especially us geezers who remember dem wines, so this is in effect a borderline Smaragd at a bargain price. And whatever the name is what it is, but the wine is wonderful; super-peppery and full of tarragon in the Zalto, more sapid and juicy in the tulip and also more phenolic, so a nod to Zalto this time, for pushing the vivid sweet sting of the vineyard forward and yielding a minty finale. I also miss the chervil notes in the tulip. (This stuff will make you crazy ) but the wine will just make you happy Grüner Veltliner Loibenberg Smaragd + + 6/750ml ALA-152 A most unusual Loibenberg, really sinewy and green like a chewy salad of herbs and mustards. The tulip shows more roasted red pepper and a spicy sweetness. I find the wine outstanding, and all of 13% alc Riesling Dürnsteiner Federspiel 12/750ml ALA % alc. Compelling aroma, especially from the tulip. (Zalto is seriously wrong for this wine!) This has all the positive attributes of underripeness, compactness, mineral density. It has bits of all the Grand Crus from an early picking due to stem-rot. Fennel-frond, grassy green tea; it made me dream of mid-november woods, when the threads begin to show Riesling Loibenberg Federspiel 12/750ml ALA % now. It s a relatively small wine in the context of this usually lavish vineyard; the silky precise aromas recall a Catoir (Mandelgarten in fact), but the palate is quite packed and intricate, albeit in an anise-hyssop and physalis style; it s slim but not gaunt, and subtly salty Riesling Reserve 6/750ml ALA-151 From all the terraces (Loibenberg, Hollerin, Höhereck, Steinertal); the alc is 13% and there s some botrytis, enough to annoy me from the Zalto, though the tulip subdues it and lets the fruit emerge. There s some coniferousness, iris and sweet spice, even the Timut pepper. It s a noble effort and a nice glass of wine, but the GVs really excel as a group Austria > Wachau / Alzinger

64 Nikolaihof-Wachau region / sub region Wachau / Mautern VINEYARD AREA 22 hectares ANNUAL PRODUCTION 8,300 cases TOP SITES AND SOIL TYPES Steiner Hund, Klausberg, Im Weingebirge, Vom Stein, Süßenberg (primary rock topped with humus or gravel, and eroded primary rock) GRAPE VARIETIES 55% Riesling 35% Grüner Veltliner 10% Neuburger, Gelber Muskateller, Gewürztraminer, Frühroter Veltliner, Chardonnay Farming practices Demeter Certified Biodynamic We are determined to make these catalogues shorter, yet the sad truth is you can t write in brief about this estate, because as soon as you start you end up writing about all of life. The headlines, if one can even glean such things, are that all is well but one mustn t presume. That is, with an estate like this one, you re not surprised to encounter a few quirks along the way. As a rule the wines are atmospheric of antiquity, and most of the time this is stirring and beautiful. If any given cork isn t perfect you get bottle variation showing as just-plain oxidation. And the occasional cask comes close to a kind of sous-voile thing which one either appreciates or doesn t. But the overall effect of these wines as a group is to return you to a kind of holy innocence. You can feel like, This is the way wine (among other things) used to be before it got all fucked up an stuff Most of you already know the story and love the wines. Bio-dynamic since 1971, first Demeter-certified wine estate in the world, all those things. The wines and the family convey a seamless unity, radiantly good humor, and an unfussy gratitude. And yet still, in their context they are open to almost infinite possibilities, and it strikes me that my most conservative estate is also my most radical. We were sitting in a schmoozy kind of way with Nikky Saahs, and he was talking about the old days. Someone may have asked why the estate decided to go bio-d so long before anyone else did. Nikky told us that in the 60s his father didn t use the prevailing chemical treatments because times weren t good and he couldn t afford them. So he did without, and his vineyards did without, and after a few years both man and vine alike learned how to do without. Some of you have seen the proud great linden that occupies the courtyard; it has become something of an emblem itself, that tree, yet at heart it s also a kindly giver of shade and shelter from the rain, not to mention a home to a lot of birds. One can t imagine Nikolaihof without that tree, yet one also can t quite explain why it makes such sense. It seems to coalesce a lot of love into its nexus, that huge green being. The birds love it, the buzzing pollinators love it, any human being who gets near it loves it, and I think the tree also loves its life and being lovely and useful. In a sense it stands for our relationship to nature itself. There was a moment where their little wire-haired dachshund, charmingly known as Lumpy, was up on his tiny hind legs peering intently into the tree and barking, and Nikki explained Sometimes when we throw his ball to him it gets caught up in the branches and eventually falls back down, and Lumpy thinks the tree is also playing with him. Well that explains everything. And if you harbored any expectation the young generation would somehow modernize Nikolaihof, it was Nikky who insisted on reviving the use of the ginormous 18th-century wooden press, which had become a museum piece. It s starting to be possible to talk about the style or the language of these wines. They are wines of atmosphere, and some 2015 Austria > Wachau / Nikolaihof-Wachau 61

65 of that atmosphere is that of the cellar, its ambient aromas and also the environment of the casks. Nikolaihof s wines are (almost) never what we d call woody, but the casks have perfumed their breath. In normal wines there is an explanation; in these wines there is a breathing. When I open a bottle at home, and I open a lot of them, I always feel, with the first whiff of aroma, that I m opening the pages of a 19-century novel. Yes they smell like GV or Riesling or whatever, but they also smell like food cooking and people laughing in the next room. BIO-MIT-BUBBLES 2012 Sekt Zweigelt Rosé Brut 6/750ml ANK Sekt Riesling Extra Brut 6/750ml ANK-172 These were our welcoming drinks which we enjoyed standing in the courtyard (dreaming of heaven as we looked upon that tree) and so I didn t write notes. I loved them both, especially the Riesling, which had great stylish fruit and was rich, not sleek, and quite long. THE WORLDS OF VELTLINER 2014 Grüner Veltliner Hefeabzug 12/750ml ANK-155 Core List Wine Cherry blossom, anise, flint; zingy with dense minty mineral as with a lot of 14s it s ostensibly light but curiously dense, jammed with flavor Grüner Veltliner Im Weingebirge Federspiel 12/750ml ANK-160 3/1500ml ANK-160M Draw-you-in aromas, like the famous salad-of-seventeen-leaves, herbs and flowers they serve in the restaurant. All of them perfect. The palate here emphasizes the mustards, with the 14 snap and bounce and spice; a lacy wine like the veins and tracings on the bottom of a leaf Grüner Veltliner Im Weingebirge Smaragd + + 6/750ml ANK-156 3/1500ml ANK-156M Refined vetiver aromas, sweet smoke and oleander exceptionally beautiful! Even by these standards. The palate is ecstatic; sweetly taut, the exhalings of happy plants, the curious mystery of chlorophyll and waving meadows, the rippling of rabbit muscles, the smile of sinew as they take the stretch they needed. Sure I m babbling, but this was the right thing to say because only one place on this earth can make a wine like this one Austria > Wachau / Nikolaihof-Wachau

66 RIESLING, YES (In the order of tasting) 2006 Riesling Vom Stein Federspiel + 12/750ml ANK-067 3/1500ml ANK-067M Bottled in Almost cryogenic it s so fresh, and not at all as warmly spicy as most 06s. Balsam and hazelnuts, it needs a ton of air; it s on a kind of threshold, waiting. I d keep it a year or decant it hours out, but if that strumpet 2006 has a leafy side, it s here. (The wine was planned as a Steinriesler but We ran out of space! ) 2012 Riesling Vom Stein Smaragd + + 6/750ml ANK-164 3/1500ml ANK-164M First it smells of 12, then of Riesling, and then of ripe red beets. The palate just pulls you into an embrace, loving arms in the form of a wine. It s really savory, the jus from a pork roast you rubbed with Chinese 5-spice; sensual, cerebral and spiritual all at once Riesling Steiner Hund + + 6/750ml ANK-161 This leapfrogs over the 11, which needs more time in the cellar. It s complex and mysterious, still opening the morning shutters. The outline is clear but the details are obscure. It tastes beautiful but won t yield to deconstruction. Why force it? There s more here than it has the voice to say right now. The vineyard itself is one of Riesling s noblest yet most inscrutable homes. The range of minerals and herbs it shows is nearly indescribable, if not incomprehensible. It also conveys a charge, as if space-dudes would land their ships here, or if you tried to catalogue the terroir using a Geiger-counter and the machine blew up in your hands Riesling Steinriesler 3/750ml ANK Riesling Vom Stein Federspiel + 3/750ml ANK-177 Steinriesler is the archaic name for Riesling, adopted by the estate as an identity for long cask-aged wines of unexceptional ripeness. These will be very tiny quanities bottles, not cases. The cask-aged one is like the very greatest sous-voile wine you ever drank. It s more recherché than the 99 or 98, which were simply walnutty and estery. The regular Federspiel, basically the in-bottle version of the Steinriesler, is a perfect mature 02, plummy and suave and lick-your-chops savory and salty Riesling Vom Stein Jungfernlese + + 6/750ml ANK-135 It means the virgin-vintage, the first crop from young vines. And it s what the Germans would call Feinherb, and it s what any sane person would call irresistible! A potion of iris and lavender, spicy and penetrating; very long, seductively earthy, like a really profound Nahe Spätlese, almost the 5-spice and wildflower of Dönnhoff s Felsenberg Austria > Wachau / Nikolaihof-Wachau 63

67 OTHER RAD STUFF 2014 Gewürtztraminer + 12/750ml ANK-174 This is the first vintage I ve really liked this wine; figures, with its high acidity. It has some of the basic nuttiness of the cellar, and interestingly also of (the variety) Neuburger, yet it s varietally true; dry, not gaudy, 12% alc and no RS but also no bitterness and a focus of lychee stands out of the smoky murmuring dream Neuburger + 6/750ml ANK-115 I ve been acquiescing to this being discreetly sold under the table to a few of you, but this 11 is entirely convincing though there s very little of it. It s like the nuttiest Amontillado you ever had (with 12% alc!), and is super-sexy like liquid new leather Gelber Muskateller + 12/750ml ANK-158 Ready? Just 10.5% alcohol. Guzzle city! Lime and tarragon, and while it s not riper than the 13 it s substantially fuller; almost a GV vetiver and lots of olive and basil oils; inferential yet impactful, Timut pepper; ethereal yet dense and definite mineral; the finish is gravelly and stern. 2007/2008/2009/201/2011/2012 Gelber Muskateller (vertical collection) 6/750ml ANK-173 AND NOW, FOR THE FIRST TIME IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD, A VERTICAL COLLECTION OF GELBER MUSKATELLER, ONE BOTTLE EACH OF VINTAGES 2007, 2008, 2009, AND At Nikolaihof there are no disposable wines, no wines you must drink young. Every wine is made with the understanding (if not the explicit intent) that it can and should age. So, I was half-joking with Nikki in San Francisco about doing a Muscat vertical, and he said Why not? The quick-&-dirty on the vintages: 07 is good and 08 is stunning and wonderful, ++ quality. 09 is yellow-fruit, more vintage than Muscat. 10 remains a favorite, sweet and giving, it nurses the palate is Muscat and then some! Even has some Riesling mojo going on is dense, almost tannic, herbal, another kind of complexity. Also Austria > Wachau / Nikolaihof-Wachau

68 Hans Reisetbauer In 1990 Hans Reisetbauer planted his first apple orchard of 1.5 hectares in Kirchdorfergut and on September 16, 1994 Christian Carl of Göppingen built a still from plans designed by Hans himself. Quickly Hans gained notoriety in 1995 by winning Schnapps of the year at the Destillata specialist trade fair. Reisetbauer has been named Master Distiller of the Year by the Austrian gourmet guide A la Carte in 04, 07, 08 and 09. Most recently he won the Falstaff s Spirits Trophy Award in Hans Reisetbauer s dedication in his orchards, detail in distillation and constant quest for new innovations has led him to be considered one of the finest producers of Eaux de Vie in the World. In order to control the quality of his products, Reisetbauer mostly uses fruit grown on his own property. Hans has also done careful comparisons to find the best water for use in his process, exclusively using spring water from Mühlviertel. As Hans explains, Temperature, time and aeration during fermentation, as well as condition of raw material are important factors influencing the quality of the final product. Following fermentation, the mash is distilled twice with the heads and tails being discarded. Only the heart of the distillate is kept as it contains the most prized volatile and aromatic components from the raw material and is responsible for creating distinctive aromas. Lastly, the product is diluted with water to bring it to 41% alcohol. Reisetbauer s Blue Gin follows the same detailed approach, utilizing a recipe of 27 botanicals from 10 different countries, and strictly Mulan variety wheat harvested from Upper Austria. Apple in Oak Barrel Apricot Eau de Vie Plum Eau de Vie Williams Pear Eau de Vie Raspberry Eau de Vie Cherry Eau de Vie Wild Cherry Eau de Vie Elderberry Eau de Vie Rowanberry Eau de Vie Ginger Eau de Vie Carrot Eau de Vie Hazelnut Eau de Vie 6/375ml (also available in 1.75L) XHR-024 6/375ml (also available in 1.75L) XHR-003 6/375ml (also available in 1.75L) XHR-001 6/375ml (also available in 1.75L) XHR-002 6/375ml (also available in 1.75L) XHR-009 6/375ml (also available in 1.75L) XHR-004 6/375ml (also available in 1.75L) XHR-011 6/375ml (also available in 1.75L) XHR-005 6/375ml (also available in 1.75L) XHR-006 6/375ml (also available in 1.75L) XHR-014 6/375ml (also available in 1.75L) XHR-013 6/375ml (also available in 1.75L) XHR-028 Mixed Case Eau de Vie 6/375ml XHR-010 Wooden case including 1 bottle of each: Apricot,Plum, Williams Pear, Raspberry, Wild Cherry and Rowanberry Whisky Blue Gin 6/750ml XHR-015 6/750ml (also available in 1.75L) XHR-025 Brut Apfel (2009) 6/750ml XHR-027 Sparkling Apple Cider, produced Méthode Champenoise, with 100% estate Jonagold apples Austria > Hans Reisetbauer 65

69 Reference Grape Varieties Grüner Veltliner Austria s signature variety one in every three vines is GV is a late-ripening thick-skinned grape. Vine material is important, and the new generation of vintners is gradually eliminating all the nasty old clones that were only bred for mega-yields. GV will excel in every echelon; it makes a great quaff, a lovely medium-weight alfresco wine, and it makes superb powerful wines that stand easily with every great dry white in the world. Among them, it is the most flexible at the table, because it goes with things that defeat every other wine. Brassicas? Check. Asparagus? No worries. Artichokes? Perfect match. Shrimp? You betcha. What about cabbages and things like that? If it stinks up your house when you cook it, GV is the wine to drink with it. Plus it goes with all the things other dry whites are used for. This is why I am about to say that GV should have pride of place on your wine lists. As a rule it s a medium-to-full bodied wine. When grown in primary rock, these are common descriptors for it: pepper, boxwood, mustard-greens (arugula, mizuna, tatsoi, et.al.), ore (a ferrous sense), shoot-smoke, basils, cress, mints and parsleys, strawberry, tobacco, and ordinary apple and citrus. When grown in loess, then you find legumes, lentils, various kinds of beans, grain (barley, oats, maize), vetiver, sorrel, oleander, roasted bell-peppers, rhubarb. Seen naked on the page, you could look at these things and say ewww, who d want to drink that? But when you taste, you know right away you re encountering something distinctive, original, and indispensible. However trendy GrüVe may have been, its greatest value is it isn t merely trendy, but rather has a permanent place in the pantheon of important grapes, and a prominent place among food s best friends. Among the many wonderful things Grüner Veltliner is, it is above all THE wine that will partner all the foods you thought you d never find a wine for. One wishes to be indulgent of the caprices of attention in our ephemeral world. But at some point over the last two weeks, tasting yet another absolutely supernal GrüVe, my blood commenced to simmerin. Where dry white wine is concerned this variety should have pride of place on wine lists. There is simply NO other variety more flexible and none offering better value especially at the high end. Aging Grüner Veltliner: you gotta be patient! I know of no variety other than Chenin Blanc (in the Loire, of course) which takes longer to taste old. All things being equal, Veltliner lasts longer than Riesling, and it never goes petrolly. What it can do is to take on a dried-mushroom character that becomes almost meaty. Mature GrüVe has been a revelation to every taster I ve seen. It s a perfect choice for a rich fatty meat course when you prefer to use white wine. Don t think you have to drink them young though if you catch one at any age short of ten years you are drinking it young. Think of young GrüVe like fresh oyster mushrooms, and grownup GrüVe like dried shiitakes. Riesling Riesling makes virtually every one of Austria s greatest dry white wines, which is to say many of the world s greatest dry whites. GrüVe comes close, but Riesling always stretches just that little bit higher. That s because Riesling is the best wine grape in the world, of either color. And because Riesling enjoys life in Austria. Great Austrian Riesling is unique. Austrian growers won t plant it where it doesn t thrive. It s almost always grown in primary rock, a volcanic (metamorphic/ igneous) derivative you rarely see in similar form or concentration elsewhere in Europe. These soils contain schist (fractured granite), shinola (just checking you re actually paying attention), mica, silica, even weathered basalt and sandstone. Riesling s usually grown on terraces or other high ground. It s about the size of Alsace wine, but with a flower all its own. And there s no minerality on the same planet as these wines. And there s sometimes such a complexity of tropical fruits you d think you d accidentally mixed Catoir with Boxler in your glass. Gelber Muskateller Only in Austria (and Germany) are they required to distinguish between this, a.k.a. Muscat a Petit Grains or Muscat Lunel and its less refined but more perfumey cousin the Muscat Ottonel. Most Alsace Muscat blends the two, and usually Ottonel dominates. Yellow Muscat has become trendy in Austria, much to my delight, because I dote on this variety. It ripens late and holds onto brisk acidity; it isn t easy to grow, but oh the results it gives! In good hands the wines are something like the keenest mountainstream Riesling you ever had from a glass stuffed with orange blossoms. I m offering every single one I could get my greedy hands on. Unscrew that cap, splash the greeny gurgle of wine into the nearest glass; sniff and salivate drink and be HAPPY. Pinot Blanc a.k.a. WEISSBURGUNDER. What used to be perhaps the world s best examples of this variety have seemingly succumbed to climate change. Many of the Serious Ones are now, to my taste, simply too alcoholic. That does leave the mid-range ones as very pure renditions of Pinot Blanc (without the blending in of Auxerrois, as is practiced in Alsace), and these often show fruit and shellfish notes I don t encounter elsewhere in the world. Yet as outstanding as the best wines can be, they face competition from the Germans and the Swiss, and even in Alsace there are a few growers who take the variety seriously. Austrian Wine Laws No great detail here, as this stuff bores me as much as it does you. The headline is, this is the toughest and most enlightened (or least unenlightened) wine law in the world, as it had to be in the slipstream of the glycol matter. There s a discernable trend away from the whole ripeness-pyramid thing. Most growers don t seem to care whether it s a Kabinett or a Qualitätswein or whatever; they think in terms of regular and reserve, or they have an internal vineyard hierarchy. So I follow their lead. I am possibly a bit too casual about it all. But I don t care either. The dry wines are all below 9 grams per liter of residual sugar, so you can tell how ripe the wine is by its alcohol. If there s a vineyard-wine it s because the Austria > Reference

70 2015 Austria > Reference 67