To cut to the chase: I love 2007. I love it as much as I love 2006, but for very different reasons. This is frustrating to me personally as I’m running out of space to store wine, and I bought lots of 06s and figured I’d take a bye on the new vintage. No can do, damn it.

After the giddy heights of 2006 I was prepared for a kind of return to the base-line with the 07s. I hadn’t heard much about them. The harvest had been difficult. When a vintage is sexy the buzz starts before it finishes fermenting. Not this time.

Put it this way: in 2006 everything was outsized, so that you got a 2-class upgrade on the low-end wines (which had never been so rich), and the top wines were mostly monumental, though at times they boiled over the rim of the pot. In 2007 the wines have their right proportions. The everyday wines are excellent in an everyday-wine way. The top wines, though, are shimmering and sublime, and as a community I predict they’ll give at LEAST as much pleasure as the 06s will.

Normally German and Austrian vintages diverge. They’re far apart geographically and macro-climactically. But 2007 is intriguingly similar in both countries; the disparate wines show related virtues. The point of divergence was harvest weather. Germany had a sunny and easy time of it; Austria had intermittent rain and a hard time of it. Both places had very early bud-break, and the vegetation cycle was as early in Austria as in Germany, which means freaky-long hang-times. As the Austrian harvest was continually pushed back by the weather, we saw a large number of wines made from grapes which set in May and were picked in November. Thus the top wines – the latest to be picked – were sleeker in body but positively riven with complexity, especially extract-driven complexity.

The marker for 2007 white wines is a palpable sense of mineral in a pulverized form, as if the very rocks were crushed. Kevin Pike called this effect “diamond dust,” which was apropos. It was in wine after wine. I hardly recall such an insistent articulation of extract, or mineral or whatever word you prefer to use. (The question is, what becomes of it? I start to wonder whether this isn’t an evanescent component, and if so, what replaces it?) The 07s are glowing with fruit, but it became impossible to isolate fruit from the omnipresent extract. The recent vintage which 07 most resembles is 2002, though with less prominent acidity and more risible mineral. Willi Bründlmayer feels his Veltliners are equal to the great 1997, and better than any vintage since. Them’s strong words.

Again as in Germany, the textural wonder of Austrian 07s is a strong creaminess that isn’t at all fat, but rather sleek and satiny. These rock-powder extracts are the last thing you expect to encounter in wines of such caressing texture. The whole vintage sits on a sweet dialectic; each of its wines is in essence improbable. Tasting them was hard work in the nicest possible way. You couldn’t rush through anything, and each wine threw its flavors around like a juggler. You couldn’t even say  “There goes another one,” because in many cases you’d never seen such rapturous terroir expression in a wine with such manic nuance.

Speaking of terroir, whereas 2006 was a vintage in which everything partook of the noble, 2007 is a year where great land tells. The Grand Crus show their Grand-Cru-ness, and there is no mistaking them.

I’d say it’s an excellent vintage for Grüner Veltliner but arguably a superb or even great one for Riesling. Of the fourteen growers in this offering who offer both varieties, only Bründlmayer’s GrüVes exceeded his Rieslings. This may have to do with Riesling’s ability to better withstand rain late in the season. The defining days of the harvest were three very rainy ones in mid-October, which caused a degree of dismay among the growers the wines do not themselves reflect. They taste great. An earlier rainfall at the beginning of September was in fact welcomed after a dry summer, but dodging the drops became a theme of the harvest chatter. One grower, who I think is actually on to something, said he thought the October rains benefited the wines, which might otherwise have become too baroque.

Put it this way: whereas the top wines of normal years are often exceptionally fine, the top wines of top years are sometimes just over the top.

All vintages have a shadow-side. Some grapes were hurriedly brought in when the mid-October rainstorm was imminent, and at times the wines can seem small. The reds are occasionally diffident, and certainly not as warm and roasty as they were in 06, but again the best of them are maybe even better than the sometimes galumphing 06s. Overall botrytis was rare, but when it appeared at all it was blatant, against such a glassy-clear backdrop. The few failed 07s were charmless and mingy. But the many successes were so gorgeous I’m investigating the air-rights above my home to see if I can add-on a sky-cellar. I cannot imagine a future without them.

Winery Of The Vintage:

Hands down: HIRSCH. I mean, yikes Mikes, I have never tasted Rieslings like these in Austria, or anywhere. Every single wine, even the teensiest little Veltliner #1 is in some sort of beatified glow of ecstatic complexity, mineral density and divine fruit.

Collection Of The Offering:

 Because it consists of 07 and also of late-released 06s, this prize goes – again HANDS DOWN – to NIKOLAIHOF.  I admit they’ve sometimes been uneven. I know their subtlety can nonplus the drinker who’s not used to wines of inference. But none of these things apply here: this is simply an astonishingly expressive and fabulous group of wines that you will love and understand even if you’re not Meister Eckhart or a member of his family.

GrüVe Of The Vintage:

Here’s a big surprise, as if: Schloss Gobelsburg’s  RIED LAMM. Sigh, again. C’mon Michi, break it up a little, give someone else a chance. Actually, the runner-up is a remarkable best-ever KAFERBERG from Bründlmayer.

Riesling Of The Vintage:

Hirsch! Um, OK, but which one?  Doesn’t matter. Gaisberg, Heiligenstein, even the kid-brother Zöbing, all are the best they’ve ever been and the best Austrian Riesling could be. The two Grand Crus are wines of a lifetime; you will never forget them.

Value(s) Of The Vintage:

Berger Grüner Veltliner Liters!

Hirsch Veltliner #1

Schloss Gobelsburg Grüner Veltliner Renner

The Wines You’d Most Likely Overlook And Shouldn’t:

Every one of the Muscats!

Ecker Roter Veltliner (best wine I’ve ever tasted from this variety)

Nikolaihof 2002 Riesling “Jungfernlese” Burggarten

The Wine Of The Offering: