Hirtzberger’s 2010 Gruner Veltliner Smaragd Rotes Tor displays unusually prominent sweet fruit – apple and peach – that informs a luscious, subtly creamy, yet buoyant palate, suggestions of green bean and rhubarb adding a more varietally-typical cast, and hints of fruit pip and crystalline, saline, peppery and ore-like mineral impingement serving for interactive intrigue and invigoration in a delightfully refreshing finish. This ought to perform well for at least 10-12 years. Given the penchant at this address for late harvest; considerable skin contact; and must aeration, I was not surprised to learn from Franz Hirtzberger Junior that only their Riesling Federspiel had been at all de-acidified. “If there’d been even a bit more hanging out there though,” he notes “then we wouldn’t have made it” – i.e. acheived ripe grapes. “We learned our lesson from 1996,” as Hirtzberger Senior saw it, namely not to harvest – despite ongoing crop loss and fear of ignoble rot (though in this case that didn’t materialize) – until the acids finally began to diminish and the skins to properly ripen. Importer: Vin Divino, Chicago, IL; tel. (773) 334-6700

Intensely mineral wine, with an austere edge of acidity and texture. It has a pure quality, its apple flavors shining through the outer shell. With its firm character, it will age many years.——R.V.(10/1/2011)—— 94