Albariño vs. Grüner Veltliner
Last week, I had the pleasure of hosting a wine event for a big law firm’s wine club. We compared and contrasted Albariño, a Galician white wine and Grüner Veltliner, a signature Austrian grape. Here is what we learned.
Albariño: a native Galician grape and its namesake wine
Geography and history
Albariño… the great Spanish wine… Hold up! The Albariño grape is actually native to Portugal; known there as Alvarinho. While Spanish Albariño wine is named after the grape varietal, Alvarinho in Portugal is rarely made into a single varietal wine. Rather, it is blended with a few more grapes to make up Vinho Verde.
In Spain, according to the wine classification system, the region is what gives a wine its name. Think, Rioja. We know (and love!) Rioja by its wine region name and not its grape name, tempranillo. Albariño is a rare exception.
Spain is best known for its red wine making. Until the late 1980’s, which is when Spain started adopting modern wine making techniques such as temperature controlled fermentation, Spanish white wines weren’t very marketable because they didn’t exhibit their current refreshing, ripe fruit profile with healthy minerality. This is because warmer temperature fermentation tends to convert the desirable fruit profile into a ‘cooked’ one, and can sometimes even cause hydrogen sulfide to be released, which is when you get that stinky, rotten egg aroma in your wine. 80’s onward, when the use of stainless steel tanks become more common in Spain, Spanish whites flourished. Albariño took its fair share from this glow-up!
Galicia has been a wine making region for centuries and is home to white wine producing grapes but because the wine wasn’t very good prior to the 80’s, it was produced en masse and wasn’t too profitable. The winemaking in Galicia took a turn in mid 1900’s with the advance of international drug trafficking. Sitting right on the Atlantic Ocean, North Western Spain became the drug entryway into Europe, and the then-unprofitable wineries (Bodegas) became fronts for drug operations! The police still occasionally bust some Bodegas in the region for drug-related crimes.
Taste profile & food pairing
- Fruit-forward with notes of lemon, nectarine and grapefruit.
- Stainless steel fermentation. Consume young and serve ice cold.
- Pair with seafood: Shellfish, scallops and octopus
Salud!
Grüner Veltliner: a signature Austrian grape
Geography and history
Being the most widely planted grape in Austria, Grüner Veltliner and its eponymous single-varietal wine also known as “GrüVe” is what put Austria on the global wine map.
Austria has a not-so-straightforward wine classification system; in fact there are three different classification systems:
1. National classification: Sweetness-based classification based on the existing German system.
2. Districtus Austriae Controllus (DAC): The newer system similar to the Spanish/French DO(C) system, which classifies wines based on their appellation*, formed in 2001.
3. Wachau classification system: Before the DAC was established, many of the growing regions came up with their own classification systems. Wachau, a small but mighty region, was one of them. The Wachau categorizes its wine three-ways, based on Alcohol By Volume (ABV).
Steinfeder: Maximum 11.5% ABV, literally means “stone feather” that depicts the feathery grass that grows on the stoney terraces of Wachau. This is the lightest GruVe style.
Federspiel: Referring to a falconry device, this wine has between 11.5% and 12.5% ABV and has the precision of a predator bird hunting for its prey.
Smaragd: Translating to emerald, Smaragd actually refers to a green lizard that can be seen in the area. Minimum 12% ABV and 9 grams of sugar per liter, this wine is smooth and creamy like the green lizard that slides around and basks in the sunny slopes of Wachau during harvest.
Austria has four main wine regions, where each are made up of smaller appellations: Niederosterreich (lower Austria), Burgenland, Steiermark (Styria) and Wien (Vienna), with 60% of the total production coming from Niederosterreich. One of the best appellations for GruVe (as well as Riesling) is the Wachau, which is in Niederosterreich. A UNESCO World Heritage site, Wachau is only responsible for less than 3% total wine production in Austria and yet it is one of the most well-known ones.
The reason why certain appellations felt the need to start their own classification systems stemmed from a scandal that took place in Austrian winemaking in 1985. It was found that some of the mass produced Austrian contained diethyline glycol, a chemical used in antifreeze, which gave the wines in question more structure/body and a sweeter taste profile. Grapes in cooler climates often struggle to ripen, which can lead to bitterness and loss of flavor in the wine produced from them. As a result, cooler climate wine production can require more handholding and care, and thus higher costs of production. Certain ‘clever’ winemakers in Austria, discovered the addition of ‘anti-freeze’ and used it as a shortcut to mass-produce cheap and drinkable wine. Once revealed, this caused a credibility issue for Austria and urged wine regions to come up with their own rules and regulations to ensure quality wine was being made and sold.
* Appellation: A legally defined area used to identify the types of grapes grown to control the quality of associated wines.
Taste profile and food pairing
- Yellow/bruised apple, pear, honeydew when warmer vintage. White pepper at the finish is a signature marker for GrüVe.
- Use of detectable oak is not permitted in Grüners by the DAC; stainless steel production. Serve ice-cold and enjoy young.
- Pairs well with aromatic vegetables that are usually tough pairings; lemongrass, green onion. Great companion to Thai and Japanese cuisine.
Prost!
