2012 Gruner Veltliner Achleiten Stockkultur

Bodenstein’s old vines 2012 Gruner Veltliner Smaragd Achleiten Stockkultur is intriguingly scented with black and green teas, moss, and pungent essences of green herbs, as well as intimations of the savory oyster liquor and sweet-saline scallop mouthwateringly evoked on a satin-textured, slickly glycerol-rich and expansive yet clear and infectiously juicy palate. It finishes with irresistible next sip-inducement and a touch of that “how-can-this-come-from-grapes?” wonder most familiar from great red Burgundies. Plan to follow it through at least 2025. Weissenkirchen, opines its mayor and most-famous vintner Toni Bodenstein, had luck in the lottery that determined whether in the generally dry growing season of 2012, enough rainfall occurred where you were to keep the vines steadily metabolizing. In apparent testimony to that luck, harvest here was finished already on the third of November with the picking of the Wachstum Toni Bodenstein Riesling. I did not have opportunity to taste the entire range of Prager 2012 Gruner Veltliners: there was so little wine (due largely to disrupted flowering of this variety) that they were sold out very quickly; several were not available stateside; and Bodenstein confesses to cellaring among them only his Achleiten bottlings – else, he notes, his library would grow cumbersomely large! Importer: Winebow, Montvale, NJ; tel. (201) 445-0620