CASE PRICE = $31.99 per bottle (12 bottle minimum purchase)
(Discounts apply after adding the correct amount to your basket)
About This Wine:New life breathed into an old monastic estate, with Willi Bründlmayer as consultant. The wines are excellent VALUES while Michael "Michi" Moosbrugger consolidates his reputation. They won’t always be so. It’s beginning to look like Martin Nigl is Moosbrugger’s aesthetic soul-brother, though Michi’s wines are just a little more fluid in texture. But they’re both diligently precise in their detailing of flavor; they both speak flavor with careful diction. His special genius seems to lie in the making of very pretty fine-grained wines at the “low” end of his range—no small gift. And some of the wines offered below are some of the finest in all this offering.
•Vineyard area: 40 hectares
•Annual production: 12,500 cases
•Top sites: Heiligenstein, Gaisberg, Lamm
•Soil types: Volcanic sandstone, mica slate, and
alpine gravel
•Grape varieties: 50% Grüner Veltliner,
25% Riesling, 5% Zweigelt, 8% Pinot Noir,
A full bodied Gruener Veltliner with great depth and natural acidity. It does provide this spicy element that is beautifully encrusted by wild flower flavours.
The vineyard nestles against the hill Gaisberg, hence shielded from cold and wind. The soil is loam and loess by halves with sand from Waldviertel gneiss in places. All these Gruener Veltliner have a natural affinity to seafood and shellfish but also to pork, veal, domestic and game birds.
What Does It Taste Like?
Extremely intense, full aroma with echoes of greengage and a hint of white pepper, mellow, yet spicy. Full-bodied, powerful and dense, the yeast veil is delicately balanced, beautiful facets, particularly exuberant. Good perspectives.
Ratings / Reviews:
Stephen Tanzer's International Wine Cellar - 91 Points:
"Medium green-yellow. Inviting aromas of honeydew melon, blossom honey and yellow apple accented by tobacco. Creamy and mouthfilling, with sweet apricot and pepper flavors supported by an elegantly integrated acid spine. Pleasant apple on the long finish. This stylish wine will drink well to 2023." - Peter Moser (Nov/Dec 09)
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate - 93 Points ('07 vintage):"Another variation on loess and rocks (the eroded gneiss base of the Gasiberg), Gobelsburg’s 2007 Gruner Veltliner Renner displays a savory, saline, peppery, and crystalline mineral depth that positively shimmers through the wine’s concentration of caramelized parsnip, coffee, peach, and tobacco. Musky, spicy notes waft throughout like the perfume of some exotic orchid. This is practically severe in its firmness and palpable sense of extract when compared to the Steinsetz, but as it evolves in bottle, its deep richness and caramel notes will become more prominent, while its illusive suggestions of flowers and minerals remain. I would plan on following this for a decade, if not longer.
Michael Moosbrugger did not begin his main white wine harvest – even for lighter-weight Gruner Veltliner – until mid-October. Unlike most Krems area growers he also picked nobly sweet wine, based on a late bloom of botrytis. Moosbrugger seems to have achieved some (considering the weather) surprisingly successful reds in 2007, having painstakingly cut off half of each cluster to inhibit the development of rot, then harvested prior to any of his whites. (I’ll report on those reds after I have re-tasted them from bottle. For notes on two outstanding 2006 vintage reds which have since lived up to their promise in bottle, consult my report in issue 177.)" - David Schildknecht (2/2009)
Wine Spectator Magazine - 93 Points ('07 vintage):
"Seductively rich and creamy, with a deep well of ripe pear, apricot and peach flavors that are joined by notes of pineapple. Finishes with a buttery array of ripe tropical fruit notes. Drink now through 2013." - KM (2/28/2009)
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate - 91 Points ('06 vintage):
