Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Plenty of yeasty creaminess and aromas here, which really help to harmonize this light and crisp gruner veltliner’s acidity. Super refreshing, but with a ton of herbal and green-pepper character, too. Bottled unfiltered, so please turn the bottle upside down a couple of times before opening. From biodynamically grown grapes with Demeter certification.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2020 Grüner Veltliner Zwickl naturtrüb offers a bright, pure, fresh and discreetly yeasty bouquet of white fruits. Round and textured, with fine mineral grip and natural fruit expression, this is a beautiful and refreshing but also substantial and finely grippy Veltliner with 11% alcohol. Tasted at the domaine in June 2021.
Fun to say and delightfully easy to drink, Grüner Veltliner calls Austria its homeland. While some easily quaffable Grüners come in a one-liter—a convenient size—many high caliber single vineyard bottlings can benefit from cellar aging. Somm Secret—About 75% of the world’s Grüner Veltliner comes from Austria but the variety is gaining ground in other countries, namely Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and the United States.
As Austria’s most prestigious wine growing region, the landscape of the Wachau is—not surprisingly—one of its most dramatic. Millions of years ago, the Danube River chiseled its way through the earth, creating steep terraces of decomposed volcanic and metamorphic rock. Harsh Ice Age winds brought deposits of ancient glacial dust and loess to the terrace’s eastern faces. Today these steep surfaces of nutrient-poor and fast draining soil are home to some of Austria’s very best sites for both Grüner Veltliner and Riesling.
Wachau is small, comprising a mere three percent of Austria’s vine surface and, considering relatively low yields, represents a miniscule proportion of total wine production. Diurnal temperature shifts in Wachau facilitate great balance of sugar and phenolic ripeness in its grapes. At night cold air from the Alps and forests in the northwest displace warm afternoon air, which gets sucked upstream along the Danube.
Its sites are actually so varied and distinct that more emphasis is going into vineyard-designated offerings even despite grape variety. Grüner Veltliner and Riesling are most prominent, but the region produces Chardonnay, Pinot Blanc (Weissburgunder), Pinot Gris, Sauvignon Blanc and Zweigelt among other local variants.