Great Grüner: Ott, Gobelsburg and Prager
10/30/13 -
(An old map of Wagram's Feuersbrunn slope showing Spiegel and Rosenberg in the center)
We get as excited as anyone by the exotic, the unfamiliar, the new and intriguing. This is no less true in the Austrian department than anywhere else in the store. Want biodynamic field blends from Vienna? We have them. How about late-release Gelber Muskateller that has spent almost two years maturing in cask? Look nowhere else. Little-known varieties such as Neuburger? But of course. That said, we also love the classics of any given region; the wines that helped to put a country on the vinous map; the reliable stalwarts that are balanced, age-worthy and true to themselves. Wines that taste so much of a certain place that you can't imagine anything similar coming from anywhere else. Grüner Veltliner was once, for some wine-lovers, seen as merely an exotic curiosity. For us, it's always been something more, and it seems as if general opinion is beginning to move in our direction.
Besides its clear utility at the table (few wines are as useful in difficult pairing situations, epecially with strongly-flavored vegetables), Grüner nearly approaches Riesling in its ability to act as a conduit for miniscule variations in soil-type. In the right hands it can be beautifully elegant and racy and while the past three vintages (09-11) have left us scratching our heads, 2012 is a welcome return to form. Lively, cool-toned GVs with attractive acidity and seemingly limitless potential to develop with age have returned. The strongest collections we've yet tasted come from Schloss Gobelsberg, Bernhard Ott and, of course, Prager.
At Gobelsburg the wines are improving by leaps and bounds with each coming vintage. We always love the ethereal Tradition bottling (regardless of vintage), made utilizing pre-war methods that would have looked awfully familiar to the Cistercian monks that lived at the estate, but the single vineyard wines such as the Lamm and Renner are achieving greater heights than we've yet seen. Bernhard Ott also had a knockout vintage across the board, from his surprisingly remarkable entry-level Gruner Am Berg all the way up to his single-vineyard wines from the various top Wagram terroirs and his amphora-aged masterpiece, the Qvevre. Prager, of course, needs no introduction and if you have even a fleeting interest in the wines of the Wachau, these belong in your cellar. -jfr
