WTN: 2005 Heidi Schröck Muscat, Neusiedlersee-Hugelland, Austria
If I ever say that I plan to stop drinking wine, test my resolve with a bottle of Heidi Schröck Muscat (despite the name, a blend of white grapes including some muscat varieties). This is a wine for those who have an unabashed love for the beverage.
Terry Theise, who imports Schröck's wines to the U.S., describes her as "one of those very few people who appear to have figured out how to live" and suggests that she carries everything off with "grace and warmth." She's something of a novelty in a country where women wine makers are few and far between, but I imagine everyone overlooks her gender once they taste her passion-driven wines.
Schröck's winery and vineyards are in Austria's Neusiedlersee-Hugelland region, near the town of Rust on the border of Hungary. The area's south-facing slopes have above-average amounts of sunlight, relative to the rest of Austria, and the soil has a high calcium content, like many of the best wine regions. The region is known for its high-quality reds and dessert wines, but Schröck produces a number of dry white table wines from interesting grapes (I'd love to try her Furmint, one of my favorite white varieties).
The wine's floral aromas flirt rather than flaunt, floating atop a city-after-a-spring-rain minerality. Steely stones and acidity come to life in the mouth, followed by that telltale floral flavor and a finish of pineapple and grapefruit. This is one of those wines that just quivers in the mouth. It's quite food-friendly and I served it with chicken legs braised in an older bottle of the same wine.
I'm glad to see screw caps on the latest vintage of Schröck Muscat, which I bought for $25 at Vintage Berkeley. I've had bad luck with old bottles from earlier vintages, when she was using various alternative closures that allowed the wine to oxidize easily (plastic-wrapped foam, thin cork around a compressed core, and so forth). In fact, the 2001 I used for the chicken legs smelled like sherry when I opened it. New closure or no, this is a wine to drink in its vibrant youth.
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