In love with Grüner Veltliner
Wall Street Journal Nov 11th :
In love With Grüner Veltliner
"I recently went to Austria and fell in love – with a grape. Its name is Grüner Veltliner;"
The Brussels- based US-journalist Bill Echiksson seems to really like our native variety: "Austria’s Grüner Veltliner satisfies with fruity, peppery flavor" and he also likes Bründlmayer’s Grüner Veltliner Loiserberg: "A good choice, (…) with a bouquet of apples and pears."
Krems, Austria -- I RECENTLY WENT to Austria and fell in love -- with a grape. Its name is Gruner Veltliner; it is indigenous to Austria, and it makes a pungent white wine with a pronounced taste of pepper. That may sound off-putting, but after spending a few days tasting, I'm addicted. In this era of globalization, with the danger of wines becoming more homogenous, here´s an original taste that Austrians are learning to value and promote around the globe.
I've long been a fan of Austria's fabulous skiing and its rich musical tradition. I also knew Austria boasted a vibrant gastronomic and wine culture, but didn't consider it an ambitious one. On this visit, travelling northwest from the capital along the Danube, I visited estates in the country's premier Gruner Veltliner growing regions, the Wachau, Kremstal and Kamptal. I discovered white wines with a quality and verve to equal those anywhere in the world. Back in Vienna, I tasted bright wines from Austria's other grape-growing regions, including sharp whites from the Sudsteiermark on the Slovenian border and a few of the famed sweet wines from the Neusiedlersee area on the Hungarian border.
Though most often drunk young, the best Austrian white wines age well, as I found tasting a Gruner Veltliner from 1973. They also come at reasonable prices, and because of their bracing acidity are easy to pair with food. One caveat: Avoid the reds for now -- maybe not forever -- and stick to the native Gruner Veltliner, which in addition to its unusual pepper perfume, also brims with grassy green, crisp citrus and tropical fruit flavors (gruner means "green").All Austrian whites, whether Gruner Veltliner, Chardonnay or Riesling, are full of fresh fruit flavors, accentuated because Austrian winemakers use little wood for aging. Many of these wines are exported around Europe, but are mostly available in specialist wine shops.
Many winemakers point to a scandal as a root of the country's viticultural resurgence. In 1985, Austrian winemakers, mostly in the eastern province of Burgenland, were caught adding diethylene glycol -- commonly used in antifreeze for autos -- to their wines. At the time, the country concentrated on making cheap sweet wines and the additive was used to artificially sweeten low-quality wines that were otherwise sour.
"It ended up being a positive shock, even in the regions like ours that weren't involved," says Hans Altmann, who runs the Weingut Josef Jamek in the Wachau region, about 70 kilometers northwest of Vienna. In the scandal's wake, tough new regulations were instituted, and winemakers began to reconsider their traditions, placing a new emphasis on "dry" wines (look for trocken on the labels).
One word of caution: This trend away from artificially sweet wines should not detract from Austria's fine, naturally sweet dessert wines made from shrivelled late-harvest grapes. The country remains a major producer of these wines, almost all from the area surrounding the shallow lakes of Neusiedlersee.
For this column, though, we'll stick to the dry offerings. The pace of change in their quality accelerated when Austria joined the European Union in 1995. Duties on imported wines disappeared.
"We knew we had to compare ourselves with the world's best," says Willi Brundlmayer, owner of Weingut Brundl-mayer in the Kamptal. He and other ambitious growers set up export departments and began selling their wines abroad for the first time.
This meant a big change in vineyard management. Mr. Brundlmayer remembers how his father's generation depended on vines planted on the plains, which produced low-quality grapes in large quantities. The stony slopes exposed to maximum sunlight, the place to produce high-quality fruit, were bare.
Together, we climb the steep Heilingstein hill, where Mr. Brundlmayer has rebuilt stone terraces, installed drip irrigation, and pruned the vines during the summer. The grapes that remain are small and concentrated.
Austrian growers are also pushing back harvesting times to allow the fruit more time to ripen in the country's cool climate. This year, picking began only at the end of October, while the harvest began in September in most of southern Europe.
A final important change was emphasizing Gruner Veltliner. For a while after the antifreeze scandal, international grape varieties such as Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay were all the rage. These can be quite good. Austrians themselves considered Riesling their noblest grape. When winemaker Martin Nigl went to New York to show off his wines in the mid-1990s, he brought only his top Riesling. "Everybody confused it with a German grape," he recalls, even though Austrian Rieslings are typically rounder and less tangy than the German ones. These days, Mr. Nigl shows off his Gruner Veltliner because, as he says, "Gruner is our special Austrian grape."
Gruner Veltliner grows mainly in Austria, and is spicier and much more interesting than other indigenous varieties such as Gruner Sylvaner. During the past three decades, Gruner Veltliner's predominance in Austrian viticulture has increased, with cultivation doubling to about 20,000 hectares. The grape's exact origin is unknown, though traces go back to Roman times. Botanically, it isn't related to other Veltliner varieties.
During my trip, I tasted some astounding Gruner Veltliners, mainly from the excellent 2003 vintage. Unfortunately, the same can't be said of the reds I tried. It's difficult to make strong reds in such a cold climate. From the indigenous varieties Blaufränkisch, St.-Laurent and their cross graft Zweigelt, to the Pinot Noir and the ubiquitous Cabernet Sauvignon, the results tended to light and fruity. Even at their best, when they had the body to stand up to international comparisons, they lacked the symphony of tastes played by the best Italian, Spanish or French reds.
Although no advance notice for tastings is required, opening hours are often limited, so it is best to call ahead.
Weingut Brundlmayer
This classic estate boasts some of Austria's most prized hillside vineyards. Willi Brundlmayer has been buying up land and now owns more than 70 hectares -- a huge amount for this country -- while keeping high standards of quality. A good choice, costing only about 10 euros, was the Gruner Veltliner Loiserberg, with a bouquet of apples and pears.
