Austrian Grüner Veltliner: panel tasting results

Entry criteria: Producers and UK agents were invited to submit their latest-release Grüner Veltliner whites from premium regions around Austria

Scroll down to see the tasting notes & scores

The verdict

This was a comprehensive tasting, focusing on specific regions where Grüner Veltliner is grown. There was a flight of wines from Lower Austria, which were mostly blends from various regions. Basic and inexpensive, they were nevertheless fresh and well made.

‘GV can be enjoyed for its youthful zest, or in its more complex old age’

All three tasters agreed there was a sameness in profile and quality to the wines from Wagram, probably because the grapes are generally grown on deep loess soils. Such terroir gives an open fruitiness rather than deep structure, so tasted one after the other it was hard to detect nuances. But they had consistently good fruit and would give considerable pleasure in the short to medium term.

In Kamptal and Kremstal we were into more serious territory. Kamptal too has many loess and loam sites, but also primary rock vineyards such as Heiligenstein that can produce mineral and long-lived wines. Stefan Neumann MS preferred the Kamptal wines: ‘They had great purity, and the Reserves were generally excellent.’ The other tasters preferred the Kremstal wines overall – its diverse terroirs bring diverse styles, though they seemed to Stephen Brook and Peter Honneger to show more focused and mineral wines.

Quick link: See all 104 wines in the panel tasting

‘Reserves’ are a fairly recent innovation, and one that Neumann had his doubts about. ‘I don’t think quality should be defined by ripeness and alcohol levels, and while many growers put their best efforts into the Reserve wines, they shouldn’t automatically be considered superior to wines with less power. Sometimes they just seem an excuse for the growers to charge more for supposedly superior quality.’

The argument was extended into the Wachau, acknowledged as the source of the mightiest GVs, mostly grown in terraced primary-rock sites overlooking the Danube. ‘When the growers created the Smaragd style over 30 years ago to indicate the ripest and most concentrated wines, an alcohol level of 12.5% or 13% was considered fully ripe,’ said Neumann. ‘Today, many Smaragd wines come in at 14% or 14.5%. You can say it’s to do with global warming, but it’s also, I think, a stylistic choice.’

Honegger concurred. ‘Today Smaragd wines can come from lower slopes, simply because it’s become easier to achieve the high ripeness that qualifies the wines for Smaragd status. So there’s a range of styles from the overripe and over-alcoholic to the more energetic and mineral wines. It’s a trend shaped by domestic demand. Austrian drinkers love the big super-ripe styles, even though they can obliterate the terroir that the Wachau is celebrated for.’ Neumann agreed, but added: ‘The Wachau still shines for the freshness, poise and balance of the best wines, though I also think that they show best at between 13% and 13.5%.’

All the tasters lamented the Austrian predilection for wines that can be drunk on release. Neumann argued: ‘Smaragds should need five years in bottle to develop complexity, and the same for Reserve wines from Kamptal and Kremstal. But today the wines seem to be fashioned to round out their minerality so as to give wines that are immediately accessible. That’s a shame.’

Almost all the wines in the tasting were from the hot 2017 vintage, which also skewed our appreciation. The bracing acidity of which GV is capable may be more evident in a cooler vintage. But the tasting did show the versatility of the variety: from crisp and lively to powerful and structured.

The scores

104 wines tasted

Exceptional 0

Outstanding 0

Highly Recommended 37

Recommended 61

Commended 3

Fair 3

Poor 0

Faulty 0

See all 104 wines from this panel tasting

About Austrian Grüner Veltliner

Affectionately known as GV and by far the country’s most widely planted grape, this Austrian white speciality has risen rapidly in prominence and rightly so.

Some grape varieties – red Petit Verdot being a typical example – tend to have a single expression. Others, such as Chardonnay or Riesling, are infinitely varied: Chardonnay can be manipulated easily by winemakers, Riesling offers stylistic variations ranging from bone-dry to ultra-sweet.

Grüner Veltliner falls into the latter camp, which may explain why it has only recently attracted the attention it deserves. Like Riesling, it responds to the soils on which it is grown: in Austria, from loess to primary rock. Stylistically too, there can be some variation; usually vinified dry, it can in its Reserve category display some residual sugar, and ice wines are quite common in northern Austria’s Weinviertel region.

In some regions, such as Wachau, Kamptal and Kremstal, it can produce powerful, bone-dry wines with remarkable ageing potential. Elsewhere it can offer an easygoing quaffing wine. With friends in Vienna back in the 1970s, our principal beverage was a litre bottling of Weinviertel Grüner Veltliner trundled back to the flat on a trolley in industrial quantities for our weekly consumption. It wasn’t a great wine, but it was refreshing and moreish and quenched our thirst through long evenings.

Gaining ground

Blind tastings in 1998 and 2002 pitted more serious examples against the finest Chardonnays, and when Grüner Veltliners took the top rankings, the wine world began to take notice. Austrians had long known of the variety’s versatility and potential. Bottlings from good sites from the 1970s could clearly age for 20 years or more, even with the high yields common in that decade. Not that it was truly necessary to cellar them. Like many dry white wines, Grüner Veltliner can be enjoyed for its youthful zest as well as in its more complex old age. But its international reputation, once close to zero, soared.

It’s the most commonly planted variety in the Weinviertel, an enormous region that stretches northwards to the Czech border. The somewhat restrictive DAC wine regulations insist that any wine from here labelled as DAC must be from Grüner Veltiner, although other varieties can thrive here too. These are essentially dry wines with high acidity, although the size and diversity of the region means that styles can and do vary.

Grüner Veltliner seems to flourish close to the Danube – it’s not a prominent variety in the warmer Burgenland, for example – and there are excellent examples from the Traisental south of the river and, facing it on the north bank, the Wagram region. In Wagram the variety grows mostly on terraces on loess soils, giving supple, spicy wines that are best drunk relatively young, although the best will age.

Then to the west lies Kamptal, renowned for its primary-rock Heiligenstein site as well as richer loess soils; Kremstal, which has a similar mix; and the Wachau, with its terraced vineyards overlooking the Danube. The Wachau wines are the steeliest of all, especially the Smaragd style, which requires high levels of ripeness but still gives an essentially dry style.

White pepper is the marker for Grüner Veltliner, and many wines do indeed exhibit that character, but by no means all. Indeed, in my experience, a Grüner Veltliner Smaragd can be hard to differentiate from a Riesling Smaragd because of the high levels of extract and minerality, although keener palates may distinguish more easily.

Austrian Grüner Veltliner: The facts

Total Austrian plantings: (2017) 14,422ha

By region (2015)

Weinviertel 6,967ha

Kamptal 2,018ha

Wagram 1,332ha

Kremstal 1,309ha

Wachau 805ha

Traisental 464ha

Austrian Grüner Veltliner: know your vintages

2018 Similar conditions to 2017, though rain in early September interrupted the harvest, and there was a good crop of full-bodied wines.

2017 A dry, hot summer refreshed by August storms, then an early harvest of elegant, spicy, fruit-forward whites.

2016 Considerable summer rain and some rot at harvest. Yet the whites proved elegant and structured thanks to cooler temperatures than in 2015.

2015 Extensive hail damage in May reduced yields, but a hot summer gave fully ripe and aromatic whites, though some had low acidity.

2014 A dreadful September wrecked hopes of high quality, although some appealing basic Veltliners were made.

2013 A hot and dry summer ended with rainfall before harvest that caused problems and brought down yields. But whites of high quality emerged.

Top Austrian Grüner Veltliner from the panel tasting:

See all of the wines tasted here

The judges

Stephen Brook

Decanter contributing editor Brook is the author of almost 40 books on travel, wine and more, and has won numerous awards for his writing on wine. His works include The Complete Bordeaux, now in its third edition, The Wines of Germany and, most recently published, The Wines of Austria (Classic Wine Library, 2016).

Peter Honegger

Honegger launched specialist importer Newcomer Wines with his partner Daniela Pillhofer in 2014. Initially on-trade only, they opened the Newcomer Wines shop and bar in northeast London in 2016, and now work with growers across Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Czech Republic, Hungary and northern Italy.

Stefan Neumann MS

Austrian-born Neumann is director of wine at Dinner by Heston Blumenthal, a two-star Michelin restaurant in the Mandarin Oriental, Hyde Park. He also previously worked at The Fat Duck in Bray, Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons near Oxford, Restaurant Hotel Obauer in Salzburg, and Steirereck in Vienna.

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