In this Grüner Veltliner wine guide, Austrian winemaker Bernhard Ott explains why this is a fantastic wine variety to pair with food, which soils and terroir it best suits, and why it is his favourite Austrian wine variety. Known for his biodynamic and organic farming, winemaker Bernhard Ott produces wines in Lower Austria and mainly focuses on this special Austrian variety, Grüner Veltliner, using minimal intervention winemaking techniques.
Amanda Barnes interviews him on the viticulture and winemaking of Grüner Veltliner in this detailed interview for subscribers.
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Grüner Veltliner wine guide: Clip transcript for hearing impaired
Grüner Veltliner is an absolutely great variety, it’s perfect for food pairing, it’s perfect for a library – you can store it in high quality for 10 to 20 years. And Grüner Veltliner is unique, it’s not Riesling, it’s not Sauvignon, it’s not Chardonnay, it’s completely unique and it’s Austrian. And this is, for me, the reason why we produce more than 90% with this variety, in combination with the soils. It’s one step more, and the loess soil is perfect for Grüner. Primary rock is more for Riesling. And this is the biggest difference also in our region, we have more loess, and where you have more primary rock you have more Riesling on these sites. But without irrigation, it’s only possible to produce Grüner Veltliner on these deep, very dense in chalk, loess soils.
You can produce from Grüner Veltliner all different styles! You can make them fresh and fruity, and I will say more technical wines. You can also produce sweet wines, from Grüner Veltliner but I think the best way is to work really intensely in the vineyards, not too high in yield. I prefer biodynamic farming for the balance, it’s very very important. The balance is the key for Grüner Veltliner for high quality. And also very important is the right harvesting point, time. Because if you harvest too green it is not in balance, and if you harvest too late you can get a lot of alcohol and my goal is to produce Grüners of, in the single vineyard, 12.5 to 13%.
Pairing with Grüner Veltliner is absolutely great. Because normally, with other varieties you have problems, with pairings. Grüner Veltliner is so easy to pair, because if you have the wine in the glass the wine is here but every time it’s a second role. I would say you can pair it with Austrian cuisine, this is the most typical also for great fish, or lobster is also possible. You have differences, if you have a warmer vintage you can use it more for sweet, intense food and if you have a dry vintage you can use it more for completely straight food, and this depends. But Grüner Veltliner is very open for any kind of dish.
Grüner for every moment!
Yes, you can also drink it alone – it’s no problem. Grüner Veltliner I will say is one of the easiest wines to pair. And you will be happy.
More features on Austria’s wine regions and Austrian wine:
- Tunnel Vision: Austria’s focus on single-site wines
- Terroir Essentials & Fast Facts on Austria’s wine regions and wine production
- Blaufränkisch wine guide and the Spitzerberg wine region
- The past, present and future of Austrian wine
- St Laurent wine guide
- Traisental wine region guide
- Zweigelt wine guide
- Carnuntum wine region guide
