Weingut Veyder-Malberg

The Free Bacchus Story

Peter Veyder-Malberg bought terraces in the Wachau that other growers had given up on. Steep, small, awkward to work, and in several cases abandoned outright because the labour could not be justified against what the fruit would fetch.

Every vineyard has been under organic inspection by the Austrian control body LACON since he founded the estate in 2008 — he says so on his own homepage, and the certificate is on the European Commission's register. His listing here is being reviewed to reflect that.

In 2011 he started harvest on 15 September and for a fortnight nobody else in the region was picking. His argument for taking on ground everyone else abandoned is that no machine has ever compacted it.

The wines are Rieslings and Grüner Veltliners of unusual tension, made from very low yields on primary rock. Bruck is the bottling most often cited, and the style runs against the Wachau's reputation for weight — these are lean, mineral, and built to age.

The Wachau's reputation is for weight — big, ripe, powerful whites off the Danube terraces — and it is worth carrying that reputation into the glass here, because these are made to argue with it. Lean is the aim, which is not the same as thin: very low yields on hard primary rock, picked early, giving Riesling and Grüner Veltliner with the tension running down the middle of the wine instead of richness spread across it. If big whites have ever left you tired halfway down the glass, this is the corner of the region to look at.