Freie Weingaertner Wachau Gruner Veltliner Smaragd Axpoint

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From a relatively cool, mica-schist site, the 2006 Gruner Veltliner Smaragd Axpoint nevertheless possesses 14% alcohol. Discreet aromas of cress, coffee, and indeterminate flowers in the nose lead to a polished, still somewhat low-key palate featuring herbs and coffee, The wine then comes alive in the finish, with a reprise of floral suggestions, and with a strikingly diverse range of mineral expressions: wet stone, chalk, ore ... . It’s hard to put a name on these characteristics, but if I wanted to point to what it is in Wachau wine that makes us feel compelled to use the “M” word, I would point to this wine’s finish. A faint heat creeps in, but that does not mar this wine’s singular personality. I am delighted to report that with 2006, director Roman Horvath and oenologist Heinz Frischengruber have brought the Freie Weingartner coop back to the front ranks of Austrian viticulture. Any who have followed – sometimes with frustration and sorrow – the past half dozen years in the history of this Wachau institution can only express relief, admiration, and elation. Success here is all the more important to American consumers today, inasmuch as wine from most of the top Wachau addresses is becoming unaffordable for many of us to drink on a regular basis, not to mention for restaurants to offer by the glass. If a few of the lower-level, higher-volume bottlings this year represented a slight dip in quality, that was to be expected given the nature of the vintage and the huge number of growers who supply fruit to this venture. For similar reasons, the Freie Weingartner were bound to deal with a certain amount of botrytis this year, but in the dry wines they seem to have retained only that which would confer positive spice and richness, bottling some improbably successful and refined sweet wines as an outlet for the rest.Importer: Vin Divino, Chicago, IL; tel. (773) 334-6700.