There are multiple reasons why one might think a ‘house Gruner’ is a far-fetched idea. First, for most Americans, Gruner is definitely a ‘foreign’ grape, giving way to more familiar varietals as Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc as the choices for a “go-to” whites to have at the ready for visitors or dinner guests. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are also cost issues. The ‘best’ Gruners can move into to high-$20 price points quite easily and there are a number of producers (Knoll, Prager to name a couple) that work at even higher price levels. Also, even with global warming, Austrians whites can vary quite a bit from vintage to vintage. While we aren’t suggesting that Gruner Veltliner is going to go ‘mainstream’ any time soon, if there were more vintages like 2019 and more folks like Richard Walzer, there’s no reason it couldn’t happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We’ve spoken highly of the 2019 vintage in Austria before, but had much fewer opportunities to work with the vintage than we would have liked. Like the heralded 2019s from Germany, the bulk of them were released during the height of the pandemic and were largely ‘absorbed’ by the market by the time things started to normalize (as that is defined these days).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As a quick reminder, the 2019s were pure, ripe, tender, expressive, engaging, and beautifully balanced. There was a supple mid-palate, bright, supporting acidity, beautifully woven white and yellow stone fruits, and subtle but present minerality. Balance was the key. Everything was proportioned like nothing we recall, with no sharp edges. That describes Richard Walzer’s Gruner Veltliner Reid Wolfsgraben 2019 to a tee. A nose of white peach and dried apricot, the palate was seamless display of peach, quince, wild herb, stones and salinity at the end. This is a very easy Gruner to like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Richard Walzer’s tiny, virtually ‘one-man-show’ operation in the Kremstal is still pretty much under the radar. This is their ‘entry-level, volume’ bottling from a single vineyard of which only 1100 cases are produced and those are allocated. In other words, this source does not have a lot of distribution, nor any attention from the press.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Walzer farms sustainably and ferments traditionally via ‘whole cluster’ in stainless steel, where the wine then sits on the lees for five months. This vineyard sits at 900-1000 foot elevation and has an average of 45-year-old vines sitting in predominantly classic loess soils. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
We can’t compare this 2019 to efforts from previous years because we’ve not seen this producer before. But we can tell you they nailed<\/em> this one! There’s the added bonus of a $13.98 price point, a strikingly low tab for a Gruner of this quality, or pretty much any<\/em> Gruner. If there was more of it consistently, it could start a Gruner ‘revolution’. As it is, it will have to be our little secret on one of the best Gruner buys around. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There are multiple reasons why one might think a ‘house Gruner’ is a far-fetched idea. First, for most Americans, Gruner is definitely a ‘foreign’ grape, giving way to more familiar varietals as Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc as the choices for a “go-to” whites to have at the ready for visitors or dinner guests. There are … Continue reading “HOUSE GRUNER?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[40],"tags":[206,207,903,902],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.winex.com\/stockreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4206"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.winex.com\/stockreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.winex.com\/stockreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.winex.com\/stockreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.winex.com\/stockreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4206"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.winex.com\/stockreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4206\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4208,"href":"https:\/\/www.winex.com\/stockreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4206\/revisions\/4208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.winex.com\/stockreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.winex.com\/stockreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.winex.com\/stockreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}