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Alzinger, Dürnsteiner Grüner Veltliner, Federspiel

Wachau, Austria 2019 (750mL)
Regular price$30.00
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Alzinger, Dürnsteiner Grüner Veltliner, Federspiel

No matter what kind of wine lover you are, professional or not, today’s wine is an absolute essential. Alzinger is a reference-point wine estate in Austria’s Wachau region the way Lafite-Rothschild is in Bordeaux, Mondavi is in Napa Valley, Penfolds is in Australia—the kind of wine even casual observers of the wine scene have likely heard of, thanks at least in part to sommeliers like me holding it up as a totem.
Ironically, we’ve only recently managed to get our hands on enough Alzinger to offer to SommSelect subscribers, so today’s offer feels like making up for lost time: This exhilarating 2018 from the village of Dürnstein is everything you could ask for in classic, mineral-etched Wachau Grüner Veltliner—and if you’re someone who doesn’t really know what that means, I couldn’t pick a better bottle to (a) perfectly encapsulate what this grape and region are all about and (b) turn you into a Grüner Veltliner obsessive for the rest of your life. As someone who’s been lucky enough to visit the Wachau—a UNESCO World Heritage Site—I can tell you that it’s the kind of place that draws people into a life of wine. It’s an all-out assault of natural beauty and rigorous, perfectionist viticulture, one which anyone who loves wine is helpless to resist. Alzinger’s quintessential Dürnsteiner Federspiel teleports me right there, to a barge floating down the Danube and me, a glass of Grüner Veltliner in hand, gazing up at those magnificent terraced vineyards. This is one of the most iconic Grüners in the game—an essential for experts and novices alike!
And what, you may ask, are the qualities of a quintessential Grüner Veltliner? Above all, it’s the finely chiseled quality these wines have—a sense that they’ve truly been sprung from rock like the cleanest, freshest spring water. In the Wachau, there are a host of different rocks from which the vines spring, based on whether you’re on flatter ground closer to the Danube (sandy, silty gravel, which Grüner prefers) or up on the steep, stone-walled terraces above (more primary rock like schist and gneiss, more often reserved for Riesling, the Wachau’s other star attraction). In total, the Alzinger family farms roughly 12 hectares of vineyards in Unterloiben and Dürnstein, with the estate now in the capable hands of Leo Alzinger, Jr. I don’t think there has been a time where I’ve found myself in Austria and haven’t visited Leo: His wines and the vineyards from which they hail are equally stunning to witness, and then there’s the large-looming presence of Leo Alzinger, Sr., who, while retired, can still be found tending vines and mending miles of terraced stone walls. It was Leo, Sr. who started it all: When he inherited the family business in the mid-1970s, they were selling fruit to the local cooperative; now, their family name is one of the Wachau’s most instantly recognizable.

Today’s Grüner is sourced from their vineyards in Dürnstein, another idyllic hamlet just upriver from Unterloiben. All the vineyard work is carried out manually and hand harvesting happens at Alzinger later than most of his neighbors. The grapes are sent just across the river to their winery where they are crushed whole-cluster with a very brief maceration. Afterward, Leo allows the wine to settle for a day before commencing a cool fermentation. Aging is carried out mostly in stainless steel, though a small portion of the final cuvée spends time in large Austrian oak vats.

The 2018 Dürnsteiner Grüner is a classic straw-yellow at its core with silver-green reflections on the rim. After you’ve opened the bottle (decanting is not necessary), you may notice a touch of spritz from a little trapped CO2, but not to worry, it dissipates quickly as all the textbook Grüner Veltliner aromas begin wafting from the glass: green apple, lime blossom, white pepper, green herbs, wet stones, and white flowers. This wine is designated “Federspiel,” the middle tier in the Wachau region’s proprietary classification system, meaning the wine reaches a ripeness level at harvest equivalent to 11.5%-12.5% alcohol. Above all else, the Alzinger wines are all about racy precision—you will taste some Federspiels in your travels that are richer and riper than this one, but few if any with this one’s head-of-a-pin balance. The combination of lip-smacking refreshment and surprising complexity is the key selling point here, especially during the Dog Days of Summer: pair this with fresh, citrusy green salads, sushi, and other lightweight seasonal fare, and you’ve got it all figured out. Alzinger makes it so easy! Cheers!
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Austria

Northeastern Austria

Weinviertel

Considered by most to be the oldest growing zone in Austria, Weinviertel is also, geographically, the largest in the country and covers the vast, northeastern expanse of Lower Austria, stretching from the western border of Slovakia, following the Danube inland and veering up to the southern border of Czechia. Its name, which translates to “wine quarter,” reflects the region’s rich, ancient wine heritage and, according to the Weinviertel DAC website, there are “7,000 years of artifacts to prove it.”

Northeastern Austria

Wachau

Austria’s Wachau appellation is the country’s most acclaimed region. About an hour northwest of Vienna along the Danube River, the vista of the steep, terraced vineyards of the Wachau creates a magnificent landscape akin to a verdant, ancient amphitheater—it is a UNESCO World Heritage site, after all. With rich and unique soils here of löess and gneiss, which lend vivid minerality to the wine.

Eastern Austria

Burgenland

The Burgenland appellation, running along Austria’s border with Hungary southeast of Vienna, has a diverse topography and a mix of soils, with more primary rock and slate at higher locations and dense loams in the rolling hills that extend toward the Pannonian plain.

Southeastern Austria

Steiermark

The region of Styria (Steiermark) is in southeastern Austria which sits near the border with Slovenia. This area is studded with long-extinct volcanoes whose deposits are a key component of the local soils and the vineyards benefit from a classic Austrian push-pull of cool Alpine air and warmer “Pannonian” currents from the east.

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