Grüner Veltliner is the grape Austria built its modern reputation on, and no other country grows it with the same conviction. This is the 2021 vintage, from the country's most planted white variety, bottled young and tight.
- Grüner Veltliner, Austria's signature white grape.
- 2021 vintage, a cool and focused year in Austria.
- Grown across the Danube valleys of Lower Austria.
- Dry, light-bodied, high in natural acidity.
How it is made
Grüner Veltliner is almost entirely an Austrian story. Outside the country, plantings are scattered and small. In Lower Austria, along the Danube and its tributary valleys, the grape covers more ground than any other, and the wines are made dry and unoaked, fermented in stainless steel to keep the fruit and the acidity intact.
How it tastes
Green apple, white pepper and a faint herbal edge, with citrus running through it. The acidity is the spine of the wine. That peppery note is the grape's own signature, a compound called rotundone, the same one found in Syrah and in black pepper itself. It is the reason Grüner Veltliner tastes like nothing else grown in Europe.
Where it comes from
Austria's white wine heartland is the Wachau, Kamptal and Kremstal, three valleys running north from the Danube. The vineyards sit on terraces of loess, granite and gneiss, and the cooler sites hold the acidity that defines the style. Grüner Veltliner has been grown there for centuries, though it was the 1980s and 1990s that turned it from a local table wine into something the rest of the world went looking for.
Good to know
Austria has some of the strictest wine labelling rules in Europe. The DAC system ties a wine to its region, its grape and its style, and a bottle carrying a regional DAC name has passed a tasting panel before it can be sold. Grüner Veltliner is the grape most closely bound to that system.
