Austria in a Case
It's a form of torture, to have to confine the whole of Austria in a single case. Austria is so various, so experimental, so full of local grape varieties and amphorae and cows' horns buried over the winter and spontaneous fermentations and terraced vineyards and ancient field blends and...
Never mind. A single case it has to be. The logical way to organize it and keep sane is to go by grape variety. Yes, the different regions vary hugely, and Grüner Veltliner from the Wachau will taste very different to Grüner Veltliner from the Weinviertel. But you're going to have to take my word for it, because as well as GV there has to be Riesling; a Spätrot-Ropgipfler blend; something from Styria to show how unlike the rest of Austria Styria is; something sweet, probably from Burgenland, to demonstrate how close to Hungary Austria can be; a Neuburger; some reds… Okay, it's a mix of grape varieties and regions. There are limits to logic.
It's impossible to exaggerate the way that Austrian wine has changed over the past few decades. Now, its quality is superb; it's one of the top winemaking countries in Europe for quality. And it emerged from a fairly low base. Back in the 1980s there was a scandal involving the addition of diethylene glycol to cheap sweet wines to make them taste fatter and sweeter (the producers hate any reference to this now; sorry). It killed the country's vinous reputation, which was in any case only just beginning. It meant that Austrian wine had to reinvent itself, which it did with stringent new laws and a new generation of energetic producers.
But, glory be, it did not succumb to the lure of Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay – at least, not much. Austrians remained too fond of growing lots of different varieties to rip them all out for the sake of making wannabe Burgundy or Bordeaux. And the reason it has always loved growing lots of different varieties is because of Heurigen.
Heurigen are inns, where you go to drink the owner's wine, from their own vineyards, and eat simple food, which is usually based on the pig. They're relaxed, sociable places, and just about every grower had one in the past; they were an excellent way of selling wine to a local market. But you need to be able to offer more than one wine, hence the focus on growing numerous different grapes.
Austria is still a country of small family growers, and multinationals have yet to move in. Even growers of the caliber of Bründlmayer still have a Heuriger. It's a bit like being able to drop into Chapoutier or Gaja for a quick glass after work.
Yes, there has been some rationalization of grape varieties. There are more than 23 white varieties and 14 red grown in the country, but Grüner Veltliner is the most common white, with 31 percent of the total vineyard – it dominates in Lower Austria, is 21.5 percent of the Viennese vineyard, 10.4 percent in Burgenland, but there's hardly a smidgen in Styria. Styria, being semi-alpine, is mostly Welschriesling, Sauvignon Blanc, Weissburgunder (aka Pinot Blanc), Muskateller and Müller-Thurgau. Lower Austria's Wachau region, by contrast, is largely Grüner Veltliner with a good chunk of Riesling. Burgenland, especially in the warmer southern part, grows plenty of reds, mostly Zweigelt and Blaufrankisch, and near the Neusiedlersee (a broad, shallow steppe lake that provides good conditions for botrytis), sweet whites.
If there's a national style, it's one of crisp minerality and, with GV, Austria was one of the first to show the world that white wine can have weight and substance without oak. GV, true, has been through every possible fashion, from super-ripe to oak-aged to botrytized to floral and back to its current classic style of bay-and-white-pepper wrapped around ripe, yellow fruit. It has been a bit of a fashion victim. It's a grape that reflects its vineyard very clearly, but also responds obligingly to different treatments in the winery, so if growers want to allow it to reflect its vineyard they have to be rigorously hands-off in the winery.
Its success is partly because of this flexibility but also because it makes very good cheap wine. At basic levels it is reliably fresh, fruity, balanced and appetising – unlike that other top white grape, Riesling, which is not at all good at making cheap wines. Riesling needs to be ripe and from a good site; in Germany, the traditional remedy for unripe, inexpensive Riesling was chaptalization and/or residual sugar. Austria doesn't like off-dry wines – they must be bone dry, or sweet. So while you can find good everyday GV as well as taut, mineral, single-vineyard versions, you must always be prepared to pay for Riesling.
Reds? Well, they've survived their obligatory over-oaked phase and have come out fresher, riper and more assured. The best are usually Blaufrankisch; aromatic, structured, elegant and dancing. In Styria you can find Blauer Wildbacher, which is turned into an acidic rosé called Schilcher, but it sells out so fast to the local market that it's not something the rest of us will find with ease.
Vienna's speciality, Gemischter Satz, is also difficult to find outside the city, but I've included one because – who knows? – you might have a ticket to Vienna in your pocket at this minute. And from there a brilliant, winey, unpredictable Gemischter Satz, made from a field blend that will yield differently each year, is just a taxi-ride away.
Gemischter Satz
Gemischter Satz is a field blend, with everything grown together, picked together and fermented together, with no selection. The result tastes totally different to a blend made after fermentation: much winier, much less predictable, not least because some varieties will be slightly overripe, some slightly underripe and some, perhaps, at perfect ripeness. The key is to plant only varieties which will ripen at approximately the same time – and obviously, to choose varieties which suit the site. These field blends are the oldest way of growing vines and were on the point of extinction when they became fashionable again. Yes, that familiar story.
Weingut Christ Bisamberg Alte Reben Gemischter Satz, Vienna The best way to taste this wine (and it's worth the detour, believe me) is to go to the Heuriger Christ in Jedlersdorf, a suburb of Vienna; from there, with a glass of wine in front of you, they can show you the Bisamberg vineyard, from which the Christs have been making wine for the last 400 years. The oldest vines in this field blend are 75 years; it's a blend of mostly Grüner Veltliner, Neuburger and Riesling, plus Weissburgunder, Traminer, Roter Veltliner, Welschriesling, Müller-Thurgau, Sauvignon Blanc and a few unidentified others. It's sleek, deep, tense and mineral, with notes of ripe tangerine zest and yellow fruits, herbs, hay and a touch of salty honey to round it out.
Grüner Veltliner
DAC stands for Districtus Austriae Controllatus, and it's the rough equivalent of French AOC. But don't worry too much about it, because the producer and the vineyard are far more important.
Schloss Gobelsburg Lamm Gruner Veltliner Reserve Erste OTW Lage, Kamptal The Lamm vineyard (which is classified as 1ÖTW: that is, Erste Lage Österreichische Traditionsweingüter; or Premier Cru to you and me) is at the foot of the Heiligenstein vineyard, and is the gently sloping loess below Heiligenstein's steeper volcanic rock; Grüner Veltliner loves this deep, rich, fertile soil. It's a vineyard with a strong character. Michael Moosbrugger, the eloquent, thoughtful winemaker at Gobelsburg, says that just as Riesling gives the best expression of Heiligenstein, GV gives the best expression of Lamm: a spicy note interwoven with smoke and silk, quince and cream, both filigree and firm. This is a perfect example of GV expressing its site rather than just itself.
Schloss Gobelsburg is easily one of Austria's best producers, making wines of subtlety and pristine complexity at all levels. It's an old monastic foundation, and it has owned these vineyards since 1171. Now it seems to be a perfect match of brilliant winemaker, brilliant terroir.
Weingut Emmerich Knoll Ried Kreutles Gruner Veltliner Smaragd, Wachau A different region, but rich, deep loess again, this time at the foot of the steep, rocky Loibenberg vineyard. As before, Kreutles ("Ried" means "vineyard") is planted with GV, Loibenberg mostly with Riesling: this division of terroirs (GV on loess, Riesling on rock) applies in all Austria's top sites.
This is a rich, powerful, dry wine of perfect poise. It's thin-textured, with dark fruit, very fine, transparent and deep. Again, the terroir, with its minerality, its insistent freshness and sparkiness, trumps the grape variety. Emmerich Knoll likes his wines tight, concentrated and tense, short on exuberance but long on ageability.
Another definition: Smaragd. The Wachau has its own classification of (in ascending order of power and ripeness) Steinfeder, Federspiel and Smaragd. All are dry.
Neuburger
Erwin Tinhof Leithaberg Weiss, Burgenland Leithaburg is in Burgenland, not far from the Hungarian border; Erwin Tinhof is the 12th generation of his family to be making wine here, and is certified organic. He's pretty keen on Neuburger, too. Neuburger is a natural crossing of Roter Veltliner and Sylvaner; it has been known since the 19th Century but is generally in decline in Austria, probably a victim of GV's fashionability. Its wines are usually gentle and pleasing rather than full of fireworks, but Tinhof's example, spontaneously fermented in large wooden barrels, is a rich, complex amalgam of apples, pears, citrus, lavender and hay, layered and succulent. Think of Rhône white but with more acidity.
Zierfandler
Weingut Stadlmann Mandel-Hoh Zierfandler, Thermenregion Any region called Thermenregion has to be warm, right? It's south of Vienna and takes its name from the hot springs at Baden (which is not the same as Baden-Baden, and not even in the same country) and not only is it warm and dry, but it grows grapes you'll be hard put to find elsewhere. Indigenous Zierfandler and Rotgipfler are the stars; sometimes they're blended together, sometimes they're separate, and I had a tough job to choose between this wine and Heinrich Hartl's Rotgipfler. So I tossed a coin.
There's something very Austro-Hungarian Empire about Zierfandler; Rotgipfler too, come to that: an opulence, a fin-de-siècle decadence that comes from the silky texture, the exotic spiciness. In Stadlmann's organic hands this is given energy and complexity by spontaneous fermentation with wild yeasts. There are flavors of hay and herbs and flowers cut through with minerality; there's a lovely texture and a firm core wrapped around with silk, and a big finish.
Styria
Andreas Tscheppe Grune Libelle Sauvignon Blanc, Steiermark Styria, or Steiermark if you want to sound knowledgeable, is way to the south, abutting Slovenia. The wines feel Alpine: fresh, light, tense. Andreas Tscheppe's Styrian winery is one of the many in Austria where you'll find a cow's horn left on a windowsill as a totem: he's biodynamic, uses hardly any sulfur, relies on indigenous yeasts and uses the words like "energy" and "life" a lot – you get the picture. And his wines do have energy and life.
Grüne Libelle means "green dragonfly" and is a more complex wine than his Blaue Libelle: smoky, taut, very mineral, very precise and transparent. It's ripe and vigorous, very finely detailed, and not really about fruit flavors at all.
Riesling
Riesling makes wines of precision and concentration in Austria; dry, tense, complex and long-lived. As we've seen, it won't grow everywhere.
Weingut Willi Brundlmayer Zobinger Heiligenstein Riesling, Kamptal Heiligenstein, in Langenlois, looks down from its rocky terraces onto the gentle slopes of Lamm below it and the river Kamp curling round; and it's one of the most expensive sites in Austria – four to five times the price of other good sites – if you ever felt like buying a few vines. Willi Bründlmayer has old vines and farms them sustainably, with no herbicides; biodiversity is his watchword. This wine is crystalline, taut and salty, with citrus peel and almond tart notes with herbs and stones; and it will age for years and years.
Familie Saahs Nikolaihof Riesling vom Stein Federspiel, Wachau From Langenlois to the Wachau, and the old vines of the south-facing, stony Vom Stein vineyard. Nikolaihof was one of the first wineries in the world to go biodynamic, back in 1971. The estate was founded as a Roman fort around 2000 years ago, and the Saahs family bought it in 1894. Fermentations are all spontaneous, of course, and Federspiel is the middle category of Wachau wines, usually quite light and for early drinking. This, however, will live. It's intense, juicy, energetic with salty quince fruit, and with tightness and surprising power masquerading as delicacy and fragility.
Blaufränkisch
Austria grows plenty of red varieties, including indigenous Blauer Portugieser, Blauburger, Sankt Laurent and Blauer Wildbacher as well as Pinot Noir, Merlot, Syrah and both Cabernets. But the international ones don't dominate, and of the local varieties, Blaufränkisch is the best – the best, that is, if you like freshness, brisk tannins and juicy fruit. And you do, don't you?
Weingut Brigitte & Gerhard Pittnauer Ungerberg Blaufränkisch, Burgenland This is a beauty. The Pittnauers are based near Gols, in what was, once upon a time, the unfashionable side of the Neuseidl lake, but which is excellent for reds, especially when they're farmed biodynamically, fermented spontaneously and aged in old oak. This is juicy, dark-fruited – all blackberries and wild hedgerows – very mineral and tight, transparent and layered; and with that sense of energy that only biodynamics and wild yeasts seem to give.
Krutzler Deutsch-Schutzen Eisenberg Reserve Blaufränkisch, Burgenland Südburgenland, where Reinhold Krutzler has his 12 hectares of vines, used to be part of Hungary; now it's the other side of the border. Krutzler has 3ha in the Eisenberg vineyard, which contribute to this wine, but the DAC, which includes a larger area, takes the name of the vineyard, and this is a DAC rather than a single-vineyard wine. But what the hell. It's a crunchy, fresh, textured, pure, precise, energetic red; it drives forcefully through the palate, accurate and fine, all blackberry fruit, earth and fresh spice.
Zweigelt
Sepp Moser Zweigelt Reserve, Neusiedlersee Zweigelt rolls easily off the tongue as a name, but as a wine it has a tendency to suffer from a bit too much oak, a touch too much extraction, and sometimes some reduction. This is, of course, because growers make it like this. Sepp Moser, however, gets it right. Nikolaus Moser farms his vines biodynamically – yes, more cow horns – and this ferments spontaneously and was not filtered. It's rich and velvety with blueberry fruit, savory too, with vanilla and cherry notes, very juicy and fresh.
Sweet
Wenzel Furmint Beerenauslese, Burgenland It's not just red wines that can be found in Burgenland; sweet whites cluster round the Neusiedlersee, which is one of the most reliable places in the world if you want noble rot. The Neusiedlersee leads into Hungary, and what do you find in Hungary? Furmint, of course. Michael Wenzel's father Robert adored Furmint, and spent years researching it, tracking down old massal selections (so much better than Communist-era clones) and learning how best to grow and make it. There are still only about 10ha of Furmint in Austria, and the Wenzels have three of them. Today Michael makes Furmint as pet-nat, as ulfiltered still wine, as single-vineyard expressions, and as sweet wine. This Beerenauslese is all fire and tension, with high acidity, as it should have; savory, toffeeish, spicy and invigorating.
No comments