2016 Grüner Veltliner Hochrain

“Two thousand sixteen was different from other difficult vintages,” said Peter Malberg, laughing, “in that the entire year was catastrophic!” Not the least of his problems – abstracting from the frost that decimated his yields in Spitzer Graben sites – was that he had thinned the crop on his other sites to such an extent that when rain finally arrived after the midsummer drought, the grapes took on water and in some cases developed lesions, so picking that already had to be selective due to the legacy of peronospora was rendered doubly so. “On the other hand,” he noted, “thanks to all that grape-swelling, yields in our sites along the Danube weren’t at all bad, although due to the frost, ripening was uneven and in part protracted. This was a vintage in which I confess that I started to question the viability of organic farming,” related Malberg, “because I really needed to spray every third day, and on our steep terraces with my size of crew, there’s just no way that this could be accomplished. So, one simply had to accept additional crop losses. But really,” he concluded, “the way the vintage ended up was okay” - an understatement given the quality I tasted from wines that Malberg is quite correct in characterizing as “fine and delicate.” (For details concerning Malberg’s estate and its vineyards, practices and recent history, consult especially the extended introductions to my reports on its 2013s and 2015s. And, as explained in some detail in the first of those introductions, I have acceded to his request that I refrain from accompanying my reviews of his wines with scores.)