2016 Frühroter Veltliner

Martin Diwald had finished picking his 2016s not long after mid-October. “They had high acidity, no question,” he relates, but adds that this is the way he likes it, and that the acids were largely tartaric, which left him unconcerned about allowing certain lots of Grüner Veltliner to undergo malo-lactic transformation in the interest of better balance and greater complexity. “As a Wagram grower,” he observes, “in warmer, drier years you risk having to intervene more to insure balance, whereas in cooler years with ample moisture you can let the musts run their course.” And he considers 2016 to have been, at those junctures in the growing season that count, the latter sort of vintage. Speaking of malo-lactic transformation, Diwald’s 2016 Grüner Veltliner Alte Weingarten was only coming out of malo when I visited him in early September 2017 and in the end he didn’t bottle that wine for another year. The vintage 2016 Riesling Eisenhut was not bottled until then either. So I have jumped-ahead below and offered my tasting notes on those two wines from immediately after bottling.

It’s worth emphasizing my impression that – from a region known as the cradle of Roter Veltliner and nowadays utterly dominated by Grüner Veltliner – Diwald’s Rieslings are arguably his most exciting recent wines. In my tasting notes from the last couple of vintages, I have tried to offer some hunches to help explain that success. Austrian growers and critics would view this phenomenon as utterly anomalous. Once the Wagram growers finally acquiesce to establishing a so-called “DAC” (which, as the last remaining holdouts, they very soon will), one can be virtually certain that Rieslings grown here will no longer be allowed to carry the appellation “Wagram.” And this will be alleged to represent progress in a period of global warming, for a region of which few wine lovers have heard and that thus should do everything it can to get its name out there in the international marketplace! “The difference in acidity between Grüner Veltliner and Riesling is even greater in warmer years,” notes Diwald. And whatever the reason – even if it’s temporary vine shut-down – he is understandably delighted at his Rieslings’ consistently efficacious acids. (For details concerning this estate, its vineyards, practices and recent history, readers are invited to consult the extended introduction to my report on its 2014s.)