2013 Riesling Heiligenstein Alte Reben

Having as much as any other grower, save perhaps Alois Kracher, served since the mid-1990s as the face of Austrian wine abroad, Willi Bründlmayer, who in 1980 assumed control of his family’s estate, scarcely requires an introduction. Among the less known of many remarkable aspects to his work is the consistently high quality he achieves from an enormous acreage and reflecting so many projects and grape varieties over and beyond the dominant Riesling and Grüner Veltliner. These include some of Austria’s most nuanced red wines (from vines Bründlmayer foresightedly planted as a hedge against ever-warmer weather, years before “climate change” was on more than a few lips); sparkling wines; and nobly sweet elixirs, the latter including memorable late harvests of Chardonnay and Muskateller. Because this array of wines is so vast, I tend to supplement my tastings of Riesling and Grüner Veltliner selectively, and in years with a significant amount of botrytis wine like 2013 I postpone red wine tasting for a subsequent visit. Fermentation and maturation of the top Grüner Veltliners are typically in oak or acacia of at most a few years’ age, so that especially when they are young, a woody element is often noticeable, though usually well-integrated. And sweet wines are more often than not rendered in barrels, often new. Bründlmayer’s son Vincent has for some years now been an important part of the large winery team.

While his Grüner Veltliners of 2013 were finished close to absolute dryness, Bründlmayer compensated successfully for their prominent acidity by selectively encouraging malolactic transformation, including in certain lots of his less expensive bottlings. The Rieslings, by contrast, remained as usual lactose-free; though permitting them to finish with three to six grams of residual sugar represents a departure from the estate’s analytically drier norm. The numerous nobly sweet 2013s were picked out simultaneous with the corresponding main harvests in order to insure that the dry wines remained virtually botrytis-free. But even if that makes the latter wines the products of necessity, Bründlmayer, not given to hyperbole, says he thinks they include the finest Prädikat Rieslings he has ever made. While tasting and purchasing Bründlmayer’s young 2013s is highly recommended, it should be noted that he has held back a larger share than usual (up to one quarter, in fact) of his top bottlings for leisurely later release. Such late releases of wines with characteristically three to eight years of bottle age are routinely reflected in U.S. offerings from this estate, although Bründlmayer indicates that many of his markets, including his home market, tend not to take advantage of his offerings’ vintage depth.

As Willi Bründlmayer was in Australia at the Riesling Symposium when I visited his estate in Langenlois in early February, I had the pleasure of tasting with his son Vincent. Born in 1983, Vincent has now been back at the winery full-time for the past three years, but he still has his own vineyards in order to pursue his own personal style.

Both father and son are Francophiles. Indeed, many of my colleagues insist that their wines are the most Burgundian of any of the whites bottled along the Danube. They do harvest late and enjoy the unctuous richness that this adds to the finest Grüner Veltliners from their best sites, but these are wines that only begin to show their true mettle after about six years. Like his father does, Vincent often spoke of “harmony” as we tasted through seven vintages of their Alte Reben, a ceremony that I have often enjoyed with Willi to update my impression of how the various vintages are developing.

For readers who do not know him, Willi Bründlmayer is one of Autria’s most famous wine personalities. Tall and lanky, with an inner drive that is well concealed behind his laid-back, friendly manner, he has done much to raise the general public’s appreciation of the Kamptal since he took over the family estate in 1981. With 80 hectares of privileged sites, including 11 alone in the Heiligenstein, he owns more first-class vines than any producer in Austria. In 2012, father and son also opened a new cellar that drops 15 meters from top to bottom to facilitate more gentle handling of the grapes and wines.

Beyond the Grüner Veltliners and Rieslings that all would expect of an estate here, Bründlmayer also makes one of Austria’s best sparkling wines--now representing over 10% of their total production--and, among many reds, a Cabernet Franc that is sometimes superb.