Grüner Veltliner (underrated)

Hello,

There's a tasting format we've grown fond of: six glasses, six different wines from a single grape variety, nothing else.

This time: Grüner Veltliner.

A sparkling wine that spent 42 months on the lees. A lightly cloudy, unfiltered wine from Vienna's Nussberg. One from the Kamptal, grown on weathered primary rock. A Wagram wine whose soil consists of seashells from the Paratethys Sea. One that fermented for nine days in a Georgian clay amphora. And a single-vineyard wine from Sankt Georgen that Roland Velich vinifies as though it were a Puligny-Montrachet.

Anyone tasting these six side by side would scarcely recognise them as the same grape variety. Grüner Veltliner is currently in its most stylistically diverse phase — broader than during the Smaragd years of the nineties, broader than during the era of grand cellar constructions around 2010. Amphora wine, sparkling wine, natural wine, Grand Cru imitation: all at once, all seriously meant.

Six winemakers who make this breadth visible. From the Danube to the Pannonian Basin.

How it works: one click on the button adds all six bottles to your basket at once. From there you can swap individual wines, remove them or combine them. It's a suggestion, not a fixed set.

Nikolaihof

Anyone descending into the vaulted cellar of Nikolaihof stands on foundations from the year 63 BC. Above, in the inner courtyard, stands the Agapitus Chapel from the Middle Ages. The vineyard 'Im Weingebirge' has been documented since the year 470 — probably the oldest recorded wine-growing address in Europe.

When Christine Saahs married into the estate in 1971, she brought Rudolf Steiner's principles with her into the cellar. Nikolaihof subsequently became Austria's first Demeter estate. In the Wachau, it remains the only one to this day. The still wines often lie in large wooden casks for twenty years before coming to market. The sparkling wine is the faster version — faster in the sense of merely four years.

Hajszan Neumann

Vienna is the only major European city with viticulture within its city limits — around 600 hectares, most of them on the Kahlenberg and Nussberg above the Danube. Fritz Wieninger has been the central figure there for decades. He runs two estates in parallel. At Wieninger, the classic line prevails. At Hajszan Neumann, he makes what wouldn't fit at the other address.

On the Nussberg stand his oldest vines, some over eighty years old. The soil: weathered limestone with little humus and much rock. Spontaneous fermentation, no filtration, minimal sulphur. Stage for the vines, not for the cellar master.

Loimer

Fred Loimer took over the family estate in 1998 and has since systematically rebuilt it: architecture, cellar, vineyard. The black cube in the vineyards of Langenlois was a statement in 2003. The conversion to biodynamics in 2006 was the next. A year later, co-founder of respekt-BIODYN — a certification that is stricter than Demeter in one respect: it regulates not only the vineyard but also the cellar.

The Kamptal is a geological patchwork. Primary rock, loess, limestone, volcanic intrusions — all within ten kilometres. Loimer works the individual sites with the same hand. That the wines nonetheless differ markedly is the point. The site speaks, not the cellar.

Fritsch

The Wagram isn't a chain of hills, even if it looks like one. It's a fossil sea coast. About 15 million years ago, the Paratethys Sea reached this far, where the Danube flows today. What remained are metre-thick layers of loess, interspersed with limestone from crushed seashells. A soil like a sponge: high water capacity, slow ripening, specific structure.

Karl Fritsch runs the estate in the third generation, biodynamic since 2006. His phrase: 'I'm simply not as good as nature.' He intervenes little. Anyone listening to him talk about viticulture for longer hears variations of this every few minutes.

Zillinger

Hans Zillinger converted to organic farming in 1984 — two years before the glycol scandal that shook Austria's wine industry to its foundations and ruined the country's reputation for years. His son Johannes took over in 2012 and continued the line. Demeter, sheep between the vines, home-grown herbs for the biodynamic preparations.

In 2011 he travelled to Georgia. That journey changed something. Today, over 60% of his wines are made in Georgian kvevri and in large wooden and acacia casks. The NUMEN is his most radical Grüner Veltliner: nine days' skin contact, then 22 months on the fine lees.

Moric

Roland Velich was a ski instructor, then a croupier, then co-winemaker at the family estate Velich, before founding Moric in 2001 — with an idea no one was pursuing at the time: to think of Blaufränkisch not as an opulent, wood-emphasised red wine, but closer to Gevrey-Chambertin. Old vines, limestone and volcanic soils in Lutzmannsburg and Neckenmarkt, open wooden vats, patient maturation.

Twenty years later: first Austrian red wine with 95 Parker points, James Suckling's Top 9 in the world, Falstaff Winemaker of the Year 2023. What he began with Blaufränkisch, he now continues with Grüner Veltliner. A small parcel in Sankt Georgen near Eisenstadt, old vines, limestone subsoil. Spontaneous fermentation, 500-litre casks, Burgundian model.

The Tasting Set

Six bottles, six winemakers, six soils — a set that brings the breadth directly to the table. Best enjoyed with six people, in direct comparison, with small pieces of bread in between.

1× Nikolaihof Brut Nature — Wachau, the opening sparkling wine
1× Hajszan Neumann Nussberg — Vienna, unfiltered, limestone-iodine
1× Loimer Käferberg — Kamptal, primary rock, stony-cool
1× Fritsch Schlossberg — Wagram, loess with seashells
1× Zillinger NUMEN — Weinviertel, nine days in the amphora
1× Moric Sankt Georgen 'Aka' — Burgenland, Burgundian vinification

How it works: one click on the button adds all six bottles to your basket at once. From there you can swap individual wines, remove them or combine them. It's a suggestion, not a fixed set.

For those wishing to explore further: we stock over sixty additional Grüner Veltliners from all Austrian wine regions.

Warm regards from Berlin,

David & the team at
Living Wines

P.S.: Anyone actually tasting the six bottles side by side doesn't need six glasses per type, but one that works with all of them. For us, that's the Zalto Universal — slender enough for the mousse in the Brut Nature to hold, wide enough for the Moric to open.