MYSTERIOUS: Great gruner veltliners from austria - You Need To See This

Birgit Einchinger Grüner Veltliner Strass, Kamptal, Austria 2020 (from £12, hic-winemerchants.com; justerinis.com) It’s spring, the sap is rising and the world is alive with green. And at this most uplifting and promising time of the year, what could be more fitting than a wine style that itself seems to draw on the same abundant verdant energy? For many of us that might mean sauvignon blanc. But in a year in which the variety has been harder to source than it has been for many years (thanks to small harvests in its heartlands in both New Zealand and the Loire), I’m thinking of a wine whose very name evokes the colour green: Austria’s very own grüner veltliner. The green grape from the village of Veltlin, to give the name its full translation, has become the country’s most widely planted white grape variety, and is capable of providing wines in a range of styles. But even at its richest there’s always a hint of the forest, and, as in Birgit Eiginger’s supremely vibrant example, a distinctive salt-and-pepper spiciness.

E H Booth Grüner Veltliner, Drunstein, Wachau, Austria 2019 (£10.50, Booths) Although riesling thrives in Austria (and is perhaps responsible for the lion’s share of the country’s very finest wines), Austrian grüner veltliner is much easier to find in the UK’s bigger wine shops: indeed, in what might be called the vinous mainstream, it’s become all-but synonymous with Austrian white wine. That’s not so much of a problem given that supermarket grüner veltliner is often superb value, generally in a lighter, aromatic, zestily drinkable style that is very good at matching leafy salads including – if the wine comes, as Aldi’s Specially Selected Grüner Veltliner, Niederösterrich 2020 (£6.99) does, with a dash of sugar othe cusp between dry and off-dry – spicy, herby Vietnamese style salads. But supermarket grüner is capable of offering rather more than that, especially when its production comes courtesy of a really top-level producer such as Domâne Wachau, the super-co-operative in the eponymous (and beautiful) wine region on the Danube, responsisble for Booths’ rippling, gorgeous, perfectly ripe own-label grüner bottling.