Assessing the ageing potential of Austrian Grüner Veltliner

International judges invited to far-flung wine competitions are expected to bring an interesting bottle to share with the other judges. So in Australia one year I brought a Grüner Veltliner from Jurtschitsch in the Kamptal that was over thirty years old. It had been given to me by the producer a year earlier. I poured it blind. None of the judges could identify the variety, and they all gasped with disbelief when I revealed the vintage.

Scroll down to see tasting notes and scores for 10 ageworthy Grüner Veltliner wines

This anecdotal evidence should not be taken as proof that Grüner Veltliner is invariably a long-lived variety. Much of it is intended to be enjoyed young and has no pretensions to grandeur. Yet some producers in Lower Austria have assured me that on certain soils types and microclimates Grüner Veltliner can age in bottle better than Riesling. I haven’t had a large enough statistical sample to know whether this is so, but I have tasted many venerable Grüner Veltliners that remain in good shape.

Old isn’t necessarily better. To be worth cellaring, a wine needs to be capable of evolving in an interesting way, either aromatically or on the palate – or both. That is not always true of Grüner Veltliner. I would consider cellaring a Grüner Veltliner from a top producer and a top site in the Wachau or Kremstal, but I would think twice about putting away a basic wine from the Weinviertel. Better to drink a wine for its youthful fruit, than in its leaden or oxidising old age.

Residual sugar

An exception probably has to be made for a wine with residual sugar. Sweet Rieslings, to be sure, can age magnificently, but Grüner Veltliner is mostly vinified as a dry wine. Unlike Riesling, it does not easily succumb to botrytis, though it does happen in certain vintages in the Wachau. For a dry Grüner Veltliner to age it needs extract and concentration and balance rather than sweetness.

Luck and good cellaring conditions may play a role too. Long ago a producer in the Kremstal fished out a wine from the 1970s from a stash of older bottles in his cellar. He chose it more or less at random, and opened it without any great expectations. Nor was it a great wine: but it was fully alive and enjoyable after about 25 years in a cool cellar. The producer was surprised too. ‘You have to remember,’ he told me, ‘that back in the 1970s the yields would have been much higher than today, that this wine was not sourced from a renowned vineyard, and that the vinification would have been more slapdash than it would be today. But it’s still fresh and drinkable!’

Bottle ageing doesn’t usually produce startling changes in the wine. Mature Grüner Veltliner can take on nutty or smoky aromas, but in many cases what is striking is that the wine retains its fruit and expressiveness without taking on the characteristics of an old wine. That is why my co-tasters in Australia were so surprised by that venerable but still youthful Jurtschitsch wine.

So is Grüner Veltliner worthy of lengthy cellaring? The answer is yes, but only if certain conditions are met: the wine should be from an estate with a proven track record, and the site (such as Kellerberg or Achleiten in the Wachau, or Lamm in the Kamptal) should be renowned for the variety. In such cases bottle age should, with luck, reveal more complex aromas and a more nuanced minerality.

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