groovy Austrian grape grabs attention

By ROGER MORRIS
02/05/2003

You would be forgiven if you thought Grüner Veltliner won the award for best foreign film director at the Rehoboth Film Festival.

In fact, grüner veltliner is the predominant white grape of Austria (no, not Australia, mate!), and the only reason it's important is that these days the middle European country is using "GV," "GrüVe " or "veltliner" to make some delicious wines that are gradually appearing at wine stores near you.

The basic trait of GV is that it has a crisp, lively, slightly greenish, sometimes citrusy backbone that makes the wine similar to a dry sauvignon blanc or a pinot blanc from Alsace. However, it is the variations that make the wine interesting. Some bottles have the floral hints of a viognier; others have the full minerally qualities of chardonnays from Burgundy.

There is also local interest in growing grüner veltliner. Phillip Weygandt, owner and winemaker at Stargazers, recently hosted tastings for fellow winegrowers featuring wines he brought back from Austria and those that he and others had made from the few veltliner vines that grow at a local commercial vineyard. These Pennsylvania wines, not yet commercial, showed the grape has good potential for East Coast vintners.

Most local wine stores carry a few bottles of veltliner, or can order them for you, and the ones I have tasted are uniformly good and some almost great.

For example, the 2000 Jurtschitsch "GrüVe" ($14) is a light, crisp, flavorful quaffing wine marked by a carnival label. The 2001 Nigyl ($14.50) is juicy and flavorful like a sauvignon blanc, but a tad short. The 1999 Jurtschitsch "Steinhaus" ($18) is crisp, greenish, long on the palate, while the 2000 Jurtschitsch "Schenkenbichl" ($41) is spectacular - a full, minerally wine with creamy oak flavors equal to many white burgundies. It's an excellent food wine.

GV accounts for about a third of Austria's production, and the best ones come from the Wachau, Kremstal and Kamptal regions along the Danube west of Vienna.

Don't be scared off by the word trocken (sometimes indicating dried grapes for sweeter wines), which on veltliner simply means a dry wine, as the word trocken indicates. Finally, the variations in style are partly because of the wide variety of soils and subsoils in these regions.

Prices are fairly high for wines most Americans have never heard of, but these are serious wines that merit the attention of serious wine drinkers.

Roger Morris writes for various food and wine publications and has been a James Beard journalism award finalist. Write to him at The News Journal, Box 15505, Wilmington, DE 19850; fax 324-2415; or e-mail features@delawareonline.com.