They’ve given it a motto already, and it’s on the money: Easy to drink, hard to walk. . . .

It is very important to distinguish the Austrian 2006s from those of Germany.  Y’all tend to lump everything with umlauts together, but in most years the two vintages don’t congrue.  The great storms that hit Germany in late September and early October passed harmlessly to the west of Austria, and all the growers reported the kind of clement uncomplicated harvest they yearn for.  The last several years they picked when they could or when they had to, but in 2006 they picked whenever they desired.  “We even got a few Sundays off,” one of them told me.  “It was that stable, day after day of perfect weather.”

But Austria and Germany weren’t entirely disparate in 2006.  What they have in common is ripeness.  And what differentiates them is botrytis.  The Germans had a lot, and the Austrians almost none.

I think 2006 will turn out to have been one of those instructive years in Austria, because if there was a single common mistake, it was over-ripeness brought on by growers’ desires to wait for the physio thing.  I confess I’m of two minds as regards the physio thing.  In part I agree that physiological ripeness; i.e., ripeness of skins, stems and seeds, is important for many reasons.  But, if you wait and wait for it you risk precisely the over-ripeness with which some ‘06s have to contend – especially if you insist on fermenting to full dryness.  2006 was an almost perfectly clean harvest, and I winced at the number of wines lost to this obsession with absolute (I would say extreme) dryness; every one of them would have made gorgeous wines with 10-15 g.l. residual sugar and 13.5% alc, but instead we get no RS and 14.5 (and even higher) alcohol, and such wines are unpleasant.

Cards on the table: I do not like very high-alcohol wines.  Knowing that the line I draw is arbitrary, I nonetheless draw it at 14%.  It has to be drawn somewhere and it might as well be there.  I’m just not drinking heavy-ass wines any more.  My senses don’t like them, my food doesn’t like them, and my entire somatic system is depressed by them.  If you feel otherwise, you’ll like many of the Austrian ‘06s that I found overstated and grotesque.

Interestingly the problem is exacerbated by more “modern” vinification.  Growers who do the whole-cluster-pressed-cultured-yeast-cold-fermented-stainless-steel thing got some wines where the alcohol snarls and scorches.  Their old-school counterparts (Hiedlerm, for instance) got wines whose weight was to some extent ameliorated by an omnipresent creaminess of lees and extract.  Such wines were, if not exactly my personal cup-o-tea, at least palatable.

There’s a curious paradox in all this.  Even if some of the top wines got out of hand, the least of the wines have never been so wonderful.  Unless you prize the “little” wine of 11.5% alc., because of its delicacy, you’ll be blown away by the weight, substance and vinosity in the bottom-end ‘06s. They have never offered this quality.  The drinker receives in effect a 1-2 class upgrade without having to spend miles or money to get it!  You buy a coach seat and they move you to First Class – just because they like you.

When I got to Austria I hadn’t tasted a single 2006. Several people told me to expect a “great vintage.”  The first wine I drank was a bottle of Gobelsburg GrüVe – one of the little ones we don’t ship – on my first evening in Vienna.  It was perfect. The first estate I visited was Berger, whose LITER of GrüVe sports no less than 13% alc. but wears it with grace.  Clearly the vintage would be outsized.  But great?  Great like 1997 was great?

Yes, great, but not like 1997 was great.

2006 is bigger and meatier.  Where 1997 is Vosne-Romanée, 2006 is Gevrey-Chambertin.  It’s a vintage of muscle and density, often magnificent, occasionally overdone, usually superb.  It is an especially resplendent vintage for Grüner Veltliner, but Rieslings are often astonishing as well.  And as meaty as most of them are, they are only rarely chewy; they are rather like a gigantic lamb shank whose meat is so tender you can coax it off the bone by mere desire alone.

I think you’ll know what I mean by this; sometimes you walk out of the shade into the sun and you can smell aromas of certain flowers and leaves because they are in the sun-warmth.  I call these sun-aromas.  They are bakey and fecund and they seem to breathe heat.  They are very different from shade aromas, which are more oblique, cooler, “greener,” more silvery.  Most of the 2005s, even the ripe ones, had shade aromas, and most of the 2006s, even the least ripe ones, have sun aromas.

Yet they are seldom “hearty” and even when they go too far they’re never bumpkins. Theirs is an innate fineness even with all that density and richness.  Part of this has to do with the absence of botrytis, which is ill-suited for most dry wines and which gives them an unpleasant bitterness.  The worst of the ‘06s are not bitter, they are alcoholically medicinal and absurdly exaggerated.  They are taller than the room they stand in, so that their heads go crashing through the ceiling.  But such sporadic misadventures are overwhelmed by the enormous number of simply regal, noble and commanding wines, many of which are as capacious and breathtaking as dry white wine can be.

Put it this way: I added two new estates to this offering, and in both cases I asked to taste a large range of back-vintages so as to ascertain the sustainable quality of the winery.  I couldn’t judge by 2006 alone; it is too fabulous and too unusual.

“Great” is a word I don’t like to use, so that when I do use it, it is called for.  Even taking the many great 2006s into account, it is too soon to know whether the vintage as a whole is truly great.  It’s undoubtedly the best vintage since 1997, but it might lack the easeful, almost mathematical logic and harmony of that classic vintage.  On the other hand, there are probably more great 2006s.

And I am well aware the new vintage arrives at an inauspicious moment.  The Dollar is in some terminal funk, and you guys spent all your money on Burgundy anyway.  I hope you didn’t buy much white, because I could have saved you a BUNDLE if you’d bought top 2006 GrüVe instead of middling 2005 Puligny.  When the dust settles I think a strong case will be made that the 2006 Austrian whites are one of the better values in the wine world, and one of the best at the low end.  The reds are also promising; the light ones in bottle already are the best they’ve ever been.  The big boys, we shall see.  Some looked most impressive and others most tannic and gnarly.

WINERY OF THE VINTAGE

It’s painful to choose just one. Here are the nominees.  Schloss Gobelsburg, for the sheer number of masterpieces, including by far the greatest collection of Grüner Veltliner I’ve ever tasted.  Alzinger, for a heart-rendingly lovely array of wines that just melt and glow with an almost beatific easefulness.  Nikolaihof, for arriving at an apotheosis of the Zen-serenity they embody.

The prize has to go to ALZINGER.  Their vintage defies comprehension and credulity.  It is so sublime I will not repeat the estate in any of the best-ofs which follow, because they’d scoop all the statuettes.

GRÜNER VELTLINERS OF THE VINTAGE

The VERY BEST is Schloss Gobelsburg’s RIED LAMM, and the best among a large group of runners-up (wines good enough to take top honors in a normal vintage) are Nikolaihof’s IN WEINGEBIRGE SMARAGD, Salomon’s LINDBERG RESERVE, and Schwarzböck’s KIRCHBERG.

RIESLINGS OF THE VINTAGE

An almost intimidatingly sizeable group!  But the very greatest is clear to me, albeit astonishing: Hiedler’s MAXIMUM.  It is squired to the Royal ball by, among many worthy peers, Bründlmayer’s HEILIGENSTEIN ALTE REBEN, Hirsch’s HEILIGENSTEIN, Salomon’s KÖGL RESERVE and finally Schwarzböck’s AICHLEITEN.  By the way, for whatever reason 2006 seems to have been supernal in the Heiligenstein, every one of whose wines was masterly and glorious.

VALUE(S) OF THE VINTAGE

These are MANY.

Glatzer’s WEISSBURGUNDER takes top honors.  Running just a half a nose behind are Gobelsburger RIESLING, Hiedler’s GRÜNER VELTLINER LOESS, and Berger’s BLAUER ZWEIGELT LITERS.

THE WINE OF THE OFFERING

Two very different wines come to mind.  The first is a regular table-wine of stunning expression and quality, Prieler’s LEITHABERG WEISS PINOT BLANC, and at a different echelon, the best sweet Austrian wine I’ve ever experienced, Bründlmayer’s 2004 LOISER BERG GRÜNER VELTLINER TBA.