1997 Gruner Veltliner Smaragd Kellerberg

"F. X." has become a veritable legend in his own time, with wine lovers of all nationalities hard pressed to nab even a bottle or two. So it is almost sheepishly that I concur with his own assessment of vintage '97: "At our estate, these are the loveliest wines yet." There may have been comparably felicitous weather in 1990, and "two or three truly great wines" from certain vintages since then, Pichler opines, but in 1997 nature and the accumulated craft of the vintner made "everything good from first to last." The wines combine fat, exuberant ripe fruit and well-buffered alcoholic fullness with a clarity and complexity that are often downright breathtaking. Pichler prides himself on renewing local confidence in gruner veltliner to the point where growers no longer "sacrifice it in favor of riesling." Indeed, his '97 gruner veltliner collection charts a stellar course where only the world finest rieslings can hope to follow. In typically laconic fashion, Pichler describes the fermentations of the '97s as "unproblematic" despite occasional residual sugar, their duration "quite normal." Like Bodenstein, he does a pied de cuve a fermentation starter batch with ambient yeasts several days before the harvest begins.