Sonntag Geschlossen Grüner Veltliner
Nine years underground, in a century-old 1850L barrel, in a cold cellar in Austria, not terribly far from the Czech border.
Today’s wine is an Austrian Grüner Veltliner, though it has very little to do with what you might think of as Grüner Veltliner.
The near decade in barrel has transformed this wine into something else, something more. Grüner Veltliner, often bulky or unwieldy, has, here, become elegant. This is Grüner at its most perfumed, sweet apples and pears, nearly caramelized while also mineral. From a generous and warmer year, the wine strikes a balance between maturity, development, freshness and finesse—there is an interplay of both oxidation and reduction that gives depth, texture and complexity.
Even a decade already behind it, there is an obvious freshness that drives through this bottle. This is another cask of the wine we brought in a few years ago — and this tasting note is still 100% correct, though it has found even more harmony with time.
There is just no way to reproduce the effects of such extended barrel aging. And there are few precedents for this kind of wine, for this extended an elevage. The only one that comes to mind immediately, are the revered and mystical “Vinothek” bottlings of Nikolaihof – wines that, we might add, command prices of $150-$200+ a bottle.
Today’s bottling should retail somewhere below $40, which is, frankly, ludicrous.
Nine years underground, in a century-old 1850L barrel, in a cold cellar in Austria, not terribly far from the Czech border.
Today’s wine is an Austrian Grüner Veltliner, though it has very little to do with what you might think of as Grüner Veltliner.
The near decade in barrel has transformed this wine into something else, something more. Grüner Veltliner, often bulky or unwieldy, has, here, become elegant. This is Grüner at its most perfumed, sweet apples and pears, nearly caramelized while also mineral. From a generous and warmer year, the wine strikes a balance between maturity, development, freshness and finesse—there is an interplay of both oxidation and reduction that gives depth, texture and complexity.
Even a decade already behind it, there is an obvious freshness that drives through this bottle. This is another cask of the wine we brought in a few years ago — and this tasting note is still 100% correct, though it has found even more harmony with time.
There is just no way to reproduce the effects of such extended barrel aging. And there are few precedents for this kind of wine, for this extended an elevage. The only one that comes to mind immediately, are the revered and mystical “Vinothek” bottlings of Nikolaihof – wines that, we might add, command prices of $150-$200+ a bottle.
Today’s bottling should retail somewhere below $40, which is, frankly, ludicrous.
Nine years underground, in a century-old 1850L barrel, in a cold cellar in Austria, not terribly far from the Czech border.
Today’s wine is an Austrian Grüner Veltliner, though it has very little to do with what you might think of as Grüner Veltliner.
The near decade in barrel has transformed this wine into something else, something more. Grüner Veltliner, often bulky or unwieldy, has, here, become elegant. This is Grüner at its most perfumed, sweet apples and pears, nearly caramelized while also mineral. From a generous and warmer year, the wine strikes a balance between maturity, development, freshness and finesse—there is an interplay of both oxidation and reduction that gives depth, texture and complexity.
Even a decade already behind it, there is an obvious freshness that drives through this bottle. This is another cask of the wine we brought in a few years ago — and this tasting note is still 100% correct, though it has found even more harmony with time.
There is just no way to reproduce the effects of such extended barrel aging. And there are few precedents for this kind of wine, for this extended an elevage. The only one that comes to mind immediately, are the revered and mystical “Vinothek” bottlings of Nikolaihof – wines that, we might add, command prices of $150-$200+ a bottle.
Today’s bottling should retail somewhere below $40, which is, frankly, ludicrous.