Blue Danube Whites
Why are we here? I ask myself as I try to separate my sticky, half-frozen fingers. My wife and I are standing in the Achleiten vineyard, high above the town of Weissenkirchen, and the Danube River, in Austria's Wachau region—but the normally spectacular view of the rocky valley below is lost in a sea of mist and cloud. The temperature is barely 40°F, and we're exhausted after eight hours of cutting shriveled berries out of bunches of grapes. A layer of syrupy grape juice coats our hands; we feel as if we've spent the day making jam inside an icebox. In fact, what we've been doing is selecting botrytized grapes for the first official riesling trockenbeerenauslese in the history of the Wachau.
"I thought you told me that it was always warm and dry here in autumn," my wife calls out. I probably did. It usually is sunny in the Wachau from spring through fall, which creates an ideal climate for the production of rich, dry white wines—the region's specialty for centuries. But our unanticipated suffering is the result of a call we had received several weeks earlier from a remarkable young vintner named Toni Bodenstein, winemaker at the Prager estate in Weissenkirchen—who asked if we would come and help him try to produce a revolutionary sweet wine in the Wachau. We couldn't resist the invitation.
Back at the winery, as Bodenstein inspects the results of our work with evident satisfaction, the local Mostwäger—literally, "weigher of must" (grapes crushed for wine)—arrives. Since the Austrian wine scandal of 1985, when diethylene glycol—a sweet, oily, potentially toxic substance related to glycerol—was discovered in several wines sold by large commercial bottlers, Austria has introduced extremely stringent wine laws. One of these requires that a Mostwäger inspect every batch of grapes harvested in the country before it's pressed, in order to verify the grapes' weight and sugar content.
Weissenkirchen's Mostwäger, Walter Bauer, is a serious fellow, but when he sees the bins of grapes we have brought back from Achleiten, his eyes nearly pop out of his head. "What is that?" he demands. Toni explains. "But Herr Bodenstein," he replies, "look at these grapes. They are so shriveled there's no juice left in them! I can't stop you, but if you want my opinion, Herr Bodenstein, it's a complete waste of time." The next day, when the grapes are put into Bodenstein's small pneumatic press and it is brought up to full pressure, not a single drop of juice flows. "What did I tell you!" exclaims the Mostwäger. But four hours later, his eyes nearly pop out of his head yet again when he sees a steady stream of thick syrupy juice finally emerging slowly from the press. We'd done it!
When I first visited the Wachau, in the fall of 1988, I was completely unprepared for the revelation that awaited me. Where else in the world, I was soon asking myself, is there a great wine region, boasting at least 1,500 years of tradition—the earliest vine terraces here date from a.d. 470—that is still waiting to be discovered by the world at large? I'll never forget standing in the dark, vaulted cellar of Franz Xavier Pichler in Oberloiben and shaking my head in disbelief at one astonishing dry riesling after another. I couldn't think of any German dry whites that could match them, and the number of Alsatian challengers was very small.
A new vineyard name was to etch itself in my mind as Pichler drew the last riesling sample we tasted—Kellerberg—from an ancient wooden barrel. Though it had only stopped fermenting weeks before, Pichler's 1988 vintage from this plot of land was an explosion of apricots and minerals on the palate. I was still catching my breath when "F. X.", as Pichler is known, began pouring another stunning series of wines. These were made from the grüner veltliner grape, an indigenous variety that accounts for 36 percent of the plantings in Austria's 140,000 acres of vineyards, and remains the most important grape variety in the Wachau—though it is likely to be overtaken by riesling in coming years. Also planted here are riesling-sylvaner (or müller-thurgau); weissburgunder (pinot blanc); feinburgunder—an Austrian synonym for chardonnay—and bits of gelber muskateller (muscat à petit grains), grauburgunder (pinot gris), neuburger, and some miscellaneous red-wine grapes. Most grüner veltliners are light, dry whites with crisp acidity and a peppery aroma. Pichler, however, makes monumental dry grüner veltliners that have all the power and richness of great white burgundies, but with a distinctive aroma of green plums, fresh herbs, and smoke. His 1995s, in particular, come as close to perfection as any wines I've encountered.
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