Wine & Spirits - April 2021 - 27

ROTER VELTLINER
GRAPES AT TONI
SÖLLNER'S ESTATE

wines have a shape, kind of like you're holding rounded, smooth pebbles in your mouth-not soft and squishy, but a beautifully rounded
taste. " Occasionally, even growers themselves testify to mistaking riesling for grüner veltliner when both issue from loess, an observation
that Quigley credits with prompting her own attempts to explore how
soil can shape flavor.
Until 2007, the Wagram labored under an amorphous designation:
" Donauland, " a name created in 1971 for a vast swath of viticultural
Lower Austria from which, one by one, the Wachau, Kremstal, Kamptal, Traisental and Carnuntum declared independence, leaving as a
lonely remnant these once proud hills on the Danube's left bank (awkwardly linked with a few unrelated sites along the opposite shore). Tasting through a broad cross section of Wagram wines, though, suspicion
arises that something else might help to explain this region's contemporary low profile: Perhaps both growers' and grüner veltliner's yearnings
are too easily satisfied. What's smooth can become overindulgent or
homogenized. It's a danger readily acknowledged by Bernard Ott-the
closest one comes in the Wagram to a star and the sole Austrian grower
of note whose production approaches 90 percent grüner veltliner. But
Ott thinks blame is misplaced in terroir. Loess, he insists, especially
when humus-enriched and complemented by strategically managed
cover crops, represents a viticultural treasure, provided, of course, a
grower doesn't over-crop. Moreover, regardless of grape variety, such
a combination is ideal for mitigating the increasingly severe droughts
and sporadically torrential rains associated with climate change. If you
want proof of loess efficacy, growers will ask you to go looking for drip
lines or irrigation pipes. Unlike most of the Wachau and most top sites
in the Kamptal and Kremstal, the Wagram is almost entirely dry-farmed.
So, whose vines are being over-indulged?

ADAPTIVE ADVANTAGES

T MIGHT SEEM PARADOXICAL in the face of global warming to tout
a thirsty grape, not to mention a region warmer in aggregate than
its better-known neighbors to the north and west. The farther
one travels down the Danube, the weaker the cooling nighttime
drafts from Austria's Waldviertel ( " forested quarter " ) and the greater
exposure to warm air funneled upriver from the Hungarian Plain. But
this underestimates the importance of altitude and ventilation. At 1,150
feet above sea level, many Wagram sites farmed by Ott, Diwald and Josef
Ehmoser reach higher than such iconic prominences as the Kamptal's
Zöbinger Heiligenstein and the Wachau's Spitzer Singerriedel, while
nearly all of Toni Söllner's Gösing sites are higher still. Moreover, many
of these slopes are capped by woods, providing an additional cooling
effect. Among the easily overlooked advantages of altitude in a warming period is that winter temperatures usually remain cold enough for
vines to go dormant and pest populations to be frozen out; also, snow
will accumulate, so that water is released gradually and not wasted.
Hugely important, too, is how open the Wagram's broad landscape is
to prevailing breezes, which further mitigate heat and, when conditions
turn humid, ward off fungus.
With grüner veltliner, avers Ott, " the vines have to be free of stress,
otherwise any elegance evaporates from the wines. " He admits to finding those that made his own reputation too opulent and creamy, and has
added to his vinification regimen features such as crushing, skin contact,
slow pressing as if in an old basket press, and long lees contact in large
casks, designed, in his words, " to capture the tension, piquancy and
precision achievable from grüner veltliner thanks to calcareous loess. "
These are quality criteria with which many of the Wagram's most talWINE & SPIRITS

APRIL 2021

Wine & Spirits - April 2021

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