Weingut Bernhard Ott

The Free Bacchus Story

The Wagram is a wall of dust. Loess — fine calcareous silt blown across central Europe during the ice ages — lies many metres deep here, and it is the whole reason this is Grüner Veltliner country rather than anything else. Loess holds water without waterlogging and stays open to air, which lets a vine ripen slowly and gives Grüner what it needs to be more than refreshing: volume in the mouth, a savoury depth underneath, and drive to carry it.

Bernhard Ott is the fourth generation, in charge since 1993, on about forty hectares that are around ninety per cent Grüner Veltliner. He converted the estate to biodynamics in 2006 and the following year helped found respekt-BIODYN, the association of central European growers that certifies biodynamic farming on this side of the Alps. He was one of thirteen founders, and five of the others are already in this cellar — Hirsch, Loimer, Paul Achs, Nittnaus and Heinrich.

Grüner Veltliner is a grape most people meet as something cheap and cheerful in a litre bottle, which does it no favours. Grown properly it is closer to a serious white Burgundy in shape than to Pinot Grigio: dry, textured, with a peppery savouriness the Austrians call Pfefferl and enough acid to age for a decade. Ott's argument, made over thirty vintages, is that loess is what makes the difference between the cheerful version and the long one.

Der Ott is the cuvée drawn from young vines in the first-growth sites — Spiegel, Stein and Rosenberg — and it shows the house style concentrated into one bottle. Part of the estate's Veltliner also ferments in Georgian qvevri, buried clay, which produces something with more grip and less polish.