Weingut Knoll, Loibner Vinothekfullung Gruner Veltliner Smaragd, Wachau 2021 - 75cl

Vinothekfüllung means, more or less, the bottling kept back for the cellar door — and at Knoll it is only made when the vintage merits it. Skipping years is the whole point. This is the estate's own reserve, drawn from its best material rather than a separate vineyard.

That material comes from the top sites around Loiben: Kreutles, Loibenberg and Kellerberg, all southern-facing, on a mix of gneiss and loess. Gneiss gives the mineral spine, loess the flesh. Fermentation is in stainless steel and the wine then rests on its lees in old casks for six to eight months — old, so the oak adds texture and nothing else. Smaragd is the Wachau's highest ripeness category, dry and fully ripe.

This is Grüner Veltliner at full stretch. The nose piles up ripe apple, passionfruit, mango, pear and the grape's signature ginger, with fresh herbs, honey and a wet-stone mineral note threaded through. On the palate it is rich and genuinely powerful, the fruit concentrated, the acidity still fresh enough to carry it, and the finish long and dusted with white spice. Grüner is too often written off as a cheerful summer white. Bottles like this are the rebuttal — a wine with the structure to sit in a cellar for ten years and repay it.

How to Serve

11-13°C, warmer than you would serve a simple Grüner, or you will mute all that concentration. A large white wine glass, and give it twenty minutes open before you judge it. Drinking well now, but it has a decade in it and will be better in three years.

Where to Drink It

Noble Rot on Lamb's Conduit Street. Scott's in Mayfair, where it will outclass most of the white Burgundy on the list. Brat in Shoreditch, for the fire and the smoke.

Food Pairings

Roast veal or pork belly, something with real richness for the wine to cut through. Grilled turbot works beautifully too. Its weight means you can treat it as you would a good white Burgundy and not be disappointed.