It’s always about the wine, but sometimes it is also about the connection. Without going into detail about the cottage industry of wine brokerages that exists in a place like California, sometimes we don’t see certain labels for a period of time simply because the representative of some small entity simply can’t be bothered to make the trip down the freeway. This is our life as it exists in the wine industry. But we deal with all manner of folks because that is what you have to do to see all that is out there.
Johann Donabaum’s Austrian wines were an immediate favorite when we started working with them about a decade ago. We liked his stuff for a couple of reasons. Clearly the guy had good vineyards, and clearly a unique touch where his Gruners and Rieslings were very typical of the personality one expected from vineyards like Spitzer Point and Setzberg in the Wachau. These wines had all the terroir and minerality one could expect, but still a certain accessibility that offered some hedonistic appeal as opposed to just “rocks and acidity’. Second, for as good as the wines were, there was a certain rational sense to the pricing.
The Johann Donabaum Gruner Veltliner Spitzer Point Federspiel 2015, the first Donabaum we have seen in a while was a perfect example of what we mean. Clean and beautifully executed as always, it is particularly gratifying to have the stuff come back in one of the best vintages we can ever recall for Austrian wines. This Federspiel (the Austrian equivalent of a kabinett in must weight) has the weight and roundness of a lot of Smaragd, with the well infused minerality one expects with a yellow stone fruit character that this particular vintage brings.
From classic gneiss (typically coarse-grained earth consisting mainly of feldspar, quartz, and mica) soils, these 30-year-old vines sit in an east facing vineyard sitting at 1000 ft. elevation. This wine sees nothing but exposure to its own lees in the cellar in an effort to express the site in its purest form. Plumper yet still crisp, this is an appealing Gruner in a great vintage from a talented source for under $20. That’s the meat of it.