2015 Grüner Veltliner Rosenberg

Like many of his neighbors, Bernhard Ott was both amazed and delighted at the degree to which, after the horrendous May hail, secondary growth managed to flourish and eventually bear good fruit -- after predictions in the aftermath of the event, which Ott did not attempt to contradict, that there might not even be a 2015 crop in his flagship Rosenberg vineyard. However, he still ended up with only around 60 percent of a normal crop, which partly explains why he could begin picking on September 15 without risking underripeness. Certainly, porous soils and exposed sites were especially susceptible to midsummer conditions. “But any drought-stressed clusters were only on the vines tapped for our Am Berg bottling,” Ott said, “and those got cut to the ground. Luckily,” he added, “we finished up on October 12 before significant rain fell.” A large portion of the fruit for this year’s single-vineyard bottlings was in fact picked around the beginning of October, reflecting Ott’s continued and concerted efforts to capture aromatic complexity without excessive must weights – a goal whose realization he insists leans heavily on biodynamics. Even so, his four finest 2015s approached 14 percent alcohol, fortunately without generating heat. Ott also strives to retain Riesling-like acidity in Grüner Veltliner, something that nature seems to have inexplicably helped out with in his sector this year -- although here, too, Ott gives biodynamic viticulture a major share of the credit. (And had he waited until the second half of October to pick, things might have been different.) After a gap in vintage 2014, a new, 2015 “Qvevre” bottling raised underground in clay will be released in 2017, but Ott was not ready to show that wine when I last visited him.

For details concerning this estate’s vineyards, practices and recent history, readers are invited to consult the extended introduction to my report on its 2013s. But I cannot resist sharing some further recent reflections. In 1994, as part of his journal’s massive “1994/95” wine guide, my Vinaria colleague Peter Schleimer wrote enthusiastically of the Wagram (then known as “Donauland”) under the title “The Awakening of Sleeping Beauty.” He profiled Czerny, Fritsch, Leth and Söllner (all of whom are still major regional forces), each at multi-page length. Eduard Ott is commended for his aspirations to viticulture that is “close to nature” with a mere half-dozen words in tiny print. That same year, Berhard Ott took over from his father. Within a decade, the younger Ott was being touted, with good reason, as the Wagram’s foremost winegrower. Yet his aspirations and viticultural expertise have kept on growing. In a recent collaboration with organic agricultural researcher Wilfried Hartl, Ott is pioneering new techniques and tools; for instance, an attachment designed to sever superficial lateral vine roots while leaving one’s cover crop intact. Ott’s stylistic vision, too, continues to evolve. “I can’t stand superficial fruitiness anymore,” he exclaimed, and proceeded to explain how the regimen he has arrived at of crush, pre-fermentative maceration and very gentle, slow pressing without adding any sulfur to the must “replicates the way the old-timers did things, and fits the way their Kellerhäuser were designed. As a child, I smelled and tasted the juice from their old wooden presses. But when I tell other growers, ‘This is how it was,’ they say ‘What?! 18 hours in the press with no sulfur? You must be crazy!’ ” Remarkably, “Mr. Veltliner,” as he has come to be known, is the sole Austrian grower about whom I write who focuses almost exclusively on Grüner Veltliner. His reputation and that of his beloved grape variety have risen not just in parallel but in mutual support. In recent years, Ott’s few rows of Sauvignon Blanc were replaced, and you have to ask to taste his tiny bit of Riesling. “My dad was among the first in our neighborhood to pull out Gemischte Sätze and plant pure Grüner Veltliner,” he notes proudly. But a few field blends have survived, and now, not without appreciating the irony, Ott has begun farming one of them (whose first fruits I review below), with a second to debut in vintage 2016.