WTN: 1998 Nigl Gruner Veltliner, Sentfenberger Piri, Krepmstal, Austria
2003 Nigl Gruner Veltliner, Sentfenberger Piri, Krempstal, Austria
When Melissa and I went to the 10-year anniversary tasting for The Age of Riesling, we bought roughly a case of wine. Bill Mayer used the event as a chance to sell off his older inventory, and one of the bottles we bought was the 1998 Nigl Gruner Veltliner Sentfenberger Piri, from Austria's Kremstal region. Nigl is a reliable producer of Gruner Veltliner, a crisp white grape indigenous to Austria, and we've bought a number of his bottles over the years. But you don't normally cellar wines from this grape. Still, I liked it at the tasting.
One can imagine this wine in its youth, crisp and vibrant and energetic. But it's matured over the years into something fuller and softer even while it's retained a twinkle in the eye. The rich gold color gave the first clue about this wine's age, a color closer to an opulent Chardonnay made with ripe California grapes. Gruner's characteristic zingy pepper aromas mingled with strong tropical fruit smells like mango and banana. Maybe there was some volatile acidity on the nose, the first hints of wine about to go south for good: It's hard to say. Melissa found this wine's flavors almost salty, and I had trouble pinpointing what I was tasting. Some smoke, maybe meyer lemon, with pepper notes on the impressively long finish. Gruner's typical searing acidity had been muted, but few would call this wine flabby. It retains a crispness that most older whites can't muster. Certainly it wasn't a bad wine, but it was interesting to taste an older sample of this grape.
We drank it with some radishes. But more on that later.
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