Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
A super Gruner and from the USA, what is going on here? Well, many of the geekiest sommeliers think the Gruner is the wine that they would drink endlessly and why not? Gruner Vetliner is a wonderful white wine varietal. Most often or nearly always, those wines hail from Austria. The wonderful 2013 Zocker from the Edna Valley of San Luis Obispo County simply rocks my world; generous with aromas and flavors of peach fuzz, the fruit notes are joined by sweet earth and green apple. Yes, this is a really cool wine; excellent with lightly grilled chicken or simply adorned seafood. (Tasted: April 3, 2015, San Francisco, CA)
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Wine Enthusiast
This grape, seldom planted on the Central Coast, produces a wine that boasts intense aromas of passion fruit juice and candied grapefruit. It’s lively and ripe on the palate, with white rose and apple blossom flavors, yet balanced, with lime peel, cut grass and steel accents.
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.
California’s coolest wine growing area, Edna Valley excels in the production of high quality Central Coast wines like Pinot noir, Chardonnay, Rhône Blends and aromatic white wines. It has a cool Mediterranean climate and an incredibly long growing season, giving late-ripening varieties plenty of opportunity to develop great phenolic complexity.
Its northwest to southeast orientation creates a direct path for cool Pacific air and fog to penetrate the valley from the Los Osos and Morro Bay area inwards. Low hillsides of both calcareous and volcanic soils are home to much of the vineyard acreage of the Edna Valley.