Tom Dockner

In 2007, a young Thomas Dockner relaunched the family’s winery in diminutive Theyern under his own (nick)name, building an imposing facility over the top of what little remained of the village’s Kellergasse, whose collective ancient underground chambers serve as his cellar. With up to 410-meter elevations, this Traisental neighborhood – which could as easily have been declared part of the Kremstal and in which viticulture nearly died out in the turbulent course of the 20th century – is probably too cool to ripen Riesling, but its soils, mixed loess sand and degraded conglomerate, harbor isolated old stands of Grüner Veltliner from which Dockner has been making vine selections for his own plantings. Surprisingly and encouragingly, Dockner has three estate-bottling neighbors, suggesting that he might be part of a larger local revival. He also farms two imposing conglomerate sites to the south in Getzersdorf and Inzersdorf, familiar as home to Traisental standard-bearer Ludwig Neumayer, and others to the north in Nussdorf (including the prominent overlook into the Traisen and Danube known as Parapluiberg), for an imposing yet growing total of 19 hectares (47 acres). I was impressed on my first visit here in June 2016 and look forward to following Dockner’s progress.

Picking here in 2015 took place from early October all the way into mid-November, and most bottlings received a modest amount of pre-fermentative skin contact. The majority of wines were bottled directly off the fine lees in spring. I teased Dockner that he is so young he must have missed Lower Austria’s barrique epidemic. He confirmed this, noting that one of his goals is for large casks to replace many of his tanks. The one wine he currently raises in cask, a Grüner Veltliner Hochschopf, is released late; the 2015, which I haven’t yet tasted, won’t come on the market until spring of 2017. (Dockner didn’t bottle a 2014 Hochschopf, though I wonder whether he might not in retrospect regret that decision, given the impressive performance of those two Dockner 2014s that I tasted.) Speaking of Hochschopf, Dockner also has Pinot Noir planted on that site, and while the two bottled wines I tasted revealed at best a work in progress, a cask sample of the fruit-forward 2015 raw materials was promising. Given the Traisental’s predominance of conglomerate soils extremely high in active lime, 2015 offers an interesting test of the familiar hypothesis, shared by Dockner, that these are conducive not only to measurably higher acidity than are less calcareous sites of comparable altitude and exposure, but also to an enhanced sense of vibrancy and energy. Dockner’s results certainly do nothing to refute that claim.

From Austria’s 2015 Rieslings & Grüner Veltliners: Ripe & Ready (Feb 2017) by David Schildknecht

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2015 Gemischer Satz

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2015 Grüner Veltliner TOM

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2015 Grüner Veltliner Theyerner Berg

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2015 Grüner Veltliner Pletzengraben

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2015 Riesling Paraplui

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2015 Traminer Pletzengraben

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2014 Grüner Veltliner Pletzengraben

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2013 Grüner Veltliner Pletzengraben

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2012 Grüner Veltliner Hochschopf

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2010 Grüner Veltliner Hochschopf

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2014 Riesling Pletzengraben

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2007 Traminer Pletzengraben

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