2007 Gruner Veltliner Kellerberg

Pichler and Krutzler’s 2007 Gruner Veltliner Wunderburg comes from a rocky portion of Kellerberg just above the town of Durnstein. They were themselves a bit taken aback by its 14.5% alcohol, but one notices only a bit of heat on one’s palate. A Kellerberg-like peppery pungency suffuses this entire voluminous and powerful wine flavored with lentil, yellow pea, musk melon, and grapefruit. It will be interesting to see whether it takes on some nuance in bottle, but I make no prognostications in view of the newness of this promising project. You may have felt that there were enough Pichlers to keep track of in the Wachau (the two estates regularly reviewed in these pages not being the only ones), but now there is another that will bear regular watching. F.X. Pichler’s daughter Elisabeth and her husband Erich Krutzler (whose brother continues to run their family’s winery in Sudburgenland, and who is involved in projects in Slovenia) have begun a domaine, to whose small acreage they are for now adding contract fruit. The fruits of their first harvest – utilizing the shared picking crew from F. X. Pichler – were all vinified and matured in stainless steel tanks, although they envision using mature large oaken ovals in future for at least some of their wines to the extent they can locate some (or purchase and break-in some new ones). As they are not – at least yet – members of the Vinea Wachau growers’ association, they cannot utilize the familiar stylistic designations Federspiel and Smaragd. (And if they persist in bottling a Sudburgenland Blaufrankisch under the same label – there is a gorgeous, mineral, bitter-sweet, tartly Barbera-like 2007 in the works – then Vinea Wachau regulations will forbid their membership.) Importer: Weygandt-Metzler Importing, Unionville, PA; tel. (610) 486-0800