The Less Famous Veltliner

 

        I was standing on a bank by the side of a sloping and narrow kellergasse (a road bordered by old wine cellars) in Fels am Wagram. Franz Leth Sr. of Weingut Leth was showing me the loess (pronounced ‘lurse’ in English) soil, which rose like walls on either side of the road. A compacted mélange of wind-blown sand, limestone and clay, it crumbled as I squeezed it between my thumb and fingers. Close by was a very short row of vines.

        ‘What grape is that?’, I asked him.

        ‘Do you work with wines every day?’

Like most people I met in Austria, he spoke excellent English. It didn’t occur to me at the time that he probably meant ‘vines’, though, so I said yes.

        ‘What do you think it is?’, he asked.

        The berries were small and green, having not yet gone through véraison, when the grapes change colour. I’d been told a couple of hours earlier by Horst Kolkmann Jr. of Weingut Kolkmann, another noted Wagram estate, that over 60 percent of his family’s vineyard was planted with Grüner Veltliner. Ergo, it was most likely Grüner Veltliner.

        ‘No’, Franz Leth said, with an air of disappointment. ‘It’s an American hybrid.’

        I’d never seen an American hybrid. Nor, if someone were to show me one today, would I recognize it. I would, however, be able to tell them plenty about Wagram and the grape Roter Veltliner, thanks to Franz Leth and other winemakers I met in Austria.

        Wagram is a green, peaceful and bucolic area to the west of Vienna. After the mind-blowing stress of driving on what was, for me, the wrong side of the road in the capital, it was a pleasure to head through the flat and sparsely populated countryside. Vines and other crops like corn and sunflowers grew to the north of the motorway and a wall of mountains loomed on the western horizon. Frost being an issue in Wagram, the vines were planted on the hillsides.

        I was here to try a lot of Roter Veltliner, which, despite its name, is used to make white wines. Nor is it related to the Austrian superstar grape, Grüner Veltliner. I was intrigued by Roter Veltliner, for it’s a wine which is rarely seen in my home country, the U.K.; in fact, I don’t think I’d ever tried one. Wagram is the main area for the grape, which is one of the three varietals in that region which can be used to make single-vineyard wines (Riedenwein).

        Roter Veltliner is nicknamed ‘the diva from Wagram’, according to Horst Kolkmann Jr. He reeled off the reasons why it has this reputation. In the vineyard, you need to ‘work double the time’ on it compared to Grüner Veltliner. Rather than growing upwards, the shoots grow out to the side or sink. It's prone to mildew and requires a green harvest after flowering and careful canopy management. Half of each bunch needs to be removed to promote ripeness. In other words, fifty percent is dumped. Franz Leth showed me precisely what this entails by pulling off the bottom half of a bunch in front of me.

        Roter Veltliner is evidently worth the considerable effort, for the wines can be really outstanding. As Rainer Christ of Weingut Christ in Vienna expressed it, the grape is ‘very interesting when you have the perfect terroir’. The growing environment in Wagram suits this late-ripening varietal, which demands dry soils and a warm climate. South-facing vineyards like Ried Scheiben and Ried Brunnthal are exposed to abundant sunshine and the region’s deep loess soils drain water very well, while retaining sufficient moisture for the vines.

        Having tasted a substantial number of wines in situ, I can report that Roter Veltliner has ample acidity, which endures even in old bottles. The wines do not lack weight in the mouth and it’s highly aromatic. It has a lovely flavour reminiscent of tropical fruits, coupled with some kind of spice, which I found hard to pinpoint.

I had read that Roter Veltliner could be disappointing when young, but that was not true of the bottles I tried. It clearly ages well, for I had a number of older wines which were wonderful. I have to mention Kolkmann’s Roter Veltliner Vision 2013 in particular, for it brought a smile to my face. From Ried Scheiben and aged for 12 months in acacia then 10 months in used oak barrels, its super ripe nose and flavours brought to mind a late harvest wine, but it contained just 3 grams per litre of residual sugar. The finish was never-ending.

        My final visit in Wagram was to Weingut Josef Fritz, in the tiny hamlet of Zaussenberg. As was often the case during my time in Austria, I couldn’t find his winery, and had to enlist the help of a tough-looking and shirtless man.

Josef Fritz is renowned for producing Roter Veltliner, and he was amused by an old press clipping on his wall in which he was described as a Traminer specialist. He was emphatic that Roter Veltliner has great potential for ageing. He said that he’d done a vertical tasting going back to the 2010 vintage, and the only year that didn’t show well was 2014, a wet year. (The many winemakers I spoke to in Austria were unanimous that 2014 was a bad year, with one exception.)

A genial and generous man with a fabulous cellar of wines, Fritz opened a bottle of his 2006 Chardonnay from the limestone-heavy Ried Steinberg. Beads of condensation were on the bottle, but the wine was astonishingly good, medium-bodied with a subtle smoky oak character. I found it almost impossible to believe that the harvest was nineteen years ago. The name of the Steinberg vineyard can no longer appear on the label, because from 2021 only wines made from Riesling, Roter Veltliner and Grüner Veltliner may be labelled as Wagram DAC single-vineyard wines. Look for his Chardonnay Grosse Reserve instead.

The last wine I tried in Wagram was not even from the region. It was a half-bottle of the storied Ruster Ausbruch dessert wine from Burgenland, which had been kindly gifted to me. It tasted like a Sauternes, but contained only 7 percent alcohol. Like many wines I had in Austria, it was stunning. On my next visit I’m definitely going to Rust.