2016 Grüner Veltliner Pellingen

After having met with Franz Proidl at the June 2016 VieVinum to taste a small subset of his 2015s, I was unfortunately only able to taste those of his vintage 2016 wines (from ostensible top sites) that were shown as part of the annual “Erste Lage” presentation by Austria’s Traditionsweingüter. I wrote concerning Proidl’s 2014s that “the[y] certainly lived up to his estate motto to ‘give each wine its freedom,’ to the tune of some wildness and funk,” and the same could be said of those Proidl wines I have encountered since. Celebrated among his countrymen, this is a grower whose fearlessness and adventurousness are hard not to admire, and when everything clicks, the results can be stunning. Moreover, Proidl is the only other prominent grower to farm the steeply terraced slopes of the diminutive Krems River (actually more of a brook) around Senftenberg, whose awesome potential is most familiar internationally from the wines of Martin Nigl. (For further details concerning the Proidl estate’s vineyards, practices and recent history, readers are invited to consult the extended introduction to my far more detailed report on its 2013s.)