2023 Weingut Berger, Grüner Veltliner, Dry White Table Wine, Austria.
As always the case, the Weingut Berger One Liter, easy opening Grüner Veltliner has a vibrantly fresh and classic array of fruit flavors and a steely mineral essence, with a light to medium body showing lemon/lime, white peach, a whiff of wild fennel and white blossoms, along with wet stone, white pepper, a touch of tropical essences, bitter almond and herb accents. Easy and quaffable, the basic Berger Grüner by Erich Berger has become a must have for Summer and it is an awesome party, picnic and beach sipper, it is also a solid companion to most sea foods and salads with artichokes. This 2023 is an exceptional version, punching way above what you’d expect for the price and giving some good insight on what you’d like to know about the vintage along the Danube, which shows promise. Along with this fine effort, I enjoyed a selection of Berger’s latest releases, which included a fabulous set of 2022 Ried Spiegel Vineyard Rieslings, a very notable Kremstal Gedersdorfer Lössterrassen Grüner Valtliner and the lovely and crisp 2023 perfumed dry Gelber Muskateller, a sleeper in the lineup. This 12.5% zesty 1L bottle of Grüner is superb and is a quality guilt free white wine that should be a perfect refresher during these hotter than normal days we’ve been experiencing.
In the cellar, Erich Berger does everything to preserve and focus of vitality and freshness, he uses only ultra clean practices with his Grüner, Riesling and Muskateller only seeing selected cultured yeasts and temperature controlled stainless steel fermentation(s) and aging, nothing fancy, but highly effective for transparency and clarity of form. Erich Berger, the winegrower, is one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet and completely humble, and to taste his his wines is always a pleasure, and as mentioned they all impress for their no pretense quality, and in particular, this one. Weingut Berger has implemented methods, such as organic farming, and a focus on sustainable practices to produce wines that showcase terroir and varietal character, and while always highlighted as a value producer, the game has changed here, as mentioned before in my prior reviews, and the wines are certainly winners through out the collection. I met up with Erich’s son Max at a recent tasting in San Francisco, with Berger’s importer Skurnik Wines, and was again impressed with the quality here, especially Berger’s white grape wines, as noted above, that come from steep terraced sites in the eastern section of the Kremstal region, not far from the Danube River, just to the west of Vienna on classic loess soils. I highly recommend checking these very charming Berger wines out as soon as possible.
($16 Est. – 1.0L) 90 Points, grapelive