Raverdave
Posts: 6520
Joined: 2/8/2002
From: Melb. Australia
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The wonderful world of Grüner Veltliner
Grüner Veltliner, or Gru-Vee, as it has been dubbed, is the latest craze. It’s Austria’s own white variety: although lots of attention has focused on Austrian Riesling, there’s actually an awful lot more Gru-Vee planted (by a factor of 10). Now it’s rightfully regarded as the centrepiece of Austria’s wine industry. If you want to look cool this summer, then you should really be sipping Gru-Vee.
So if Austrian whites, and Grüner Veltliners in particular, are so good, how come we haven’t seen many of them here in the UK? The main reason they’ve not been better known abroad is because the domestic market greedily snaps up most of the good stuff, and keeps the prices high across the board. Indeed, Austria doesn’t actually make that much wine. But the word is out, and Grüner Veltliner is gaining more of the attention that it deserves. With its food friendliness, versatility and in many cases a capacity to gain complexity with age, Grüner looks set to gain more friends.
Much of the hype surrounding Grüner Veltliner comes from a series of blind tastings (there have been three so far) put on by a Swiss aficionado of Austrian wines, of which the best publicized was held in the UK at the invitation of MWs Jancis Robinson and Tim Atkin. In this shoot-out, Austria’s leading Grüner Veltliners and Chardonnays were pitched against top Chardonnays from around the world, including some very, very stylish white Burgundies. Remarkably, the panel of illustrious judges voted the Austrian wines into seven of the top 10 places. Grüner Veltliner was the clear winner.
Grüner has a variety of expressions. Cropped at high yields it can make a pleasant but light quaffing white, but if growers take a little more care it is capable of making complex, full flavoured, spicy whites often with a distinctive white flower and cracked pepper edge to them. The examples that I tried below (at a tasting put on by the Austrian wine marketing board) aren’t necessarily the best; they represent a spectrum of styles, and many of the most famous names are missing. However, the quality was consistently good across the board. Only a couple of these wines have seen new oak: generally, Gru-Vee doesn’t need new oak to enhance its character, and if barriques are used they have to be used with care.
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