2010 Gruner Veltliner Achleiten Stockkultur

From a remarkable vineyard for details about which consult issue 177, Bodenstein’s 2010 Gruner Veltliner Smaragd Achleiten Stockkultur is gorgeously scented with jasmine, lily of the valley, black tea, white peach, pink grapefruit, sassafras, and pea tendrils. Here is a striking instance of sheer extract enhancing the sense of sweet fruit, yet for all of its lushness and palate expansiveness, this irresistibly luscious, juicy Gruner Veltliner is strikingly buoyant, rendering its persistent sense of florality that much more striking and appropriate. Paradoxically, while these old vines have generally generated a wine lower in acidity than that of Bodenstein’s two other Achleiten parcels, or for that matter than any of his other Gruner Veltliner, this year it’s the other way around, with the Stockkultur (named for old-style, single-post training) leading in the acid department. I suspect this will be worth following for the better part of two decades. “True, we had higher than normal acid levels,” relates Toni Bodenstein, “but I did things differently than in other years; three things, namely. The first was to let the grapes hang especially long, and all of the Smaragd was harvested in November. Then, I employed up to 17 hours of skin contact, which reduced the acidity by a gram, sometimes even more. Of course, that was tartaric acid, but due to the long hang time and healthy fruit, we had a high ratio of tartaric. And after long fermentations – not ended before February – we added no sulfur whatsoever and retained the fine lees, which we then stirred weekly through April, making for even higher extract levels and more buffering. And given the high extract and low pH levels, these wines needed comparatively little sulfur at bottling, which with the exception of one early portion of Federspiel, took place in May. To have de-acidified them,” he concludes emphatically, “would have been to risk stripping them of their souls.” Given the tiny size of his crop, Bodenstein elected to forgo separate bottlings from two sites each in Riesling and Gruner Veltliner, instead supplementing his two Federspiel bottlings with that fruit (even if their vineyard designations on the labels stayed the same) “and even then,” he notes, “with Weitenberg and Liebenberg added into the Hinter der Burg, for example, I ended up with less than 50% of the volume of that Federspiel in 2009.” Importer: Winebow, Montvale, NJ; tel. (201) 445-0620