2015 Laurenz V Charming Gruner Veltiner (Library Release) 6-Pack in OCC

Yeasty savor and saltiness mingle with yellow pear scents on the nose of this wine. The palate adds juicy, ripe yellow plum to the mix, expanding its flavor to full-on fruitiness, with a baseline of zest and saltiness. It's generously packed, with a clean, dry and lasting finish. (AM)

Laurenz V. is the house Laurenz Maria Moser V founded in 2004 to make one grape and one grape only. His grandfather, Lenz Moser III, is the man Austrians call Grandpa Grüner: the pioneer whose high-training system reshaped the country's vineyards in the 1950s and turned Grüner Veltliner from a workhorse into Austria's signature variety. Charming is the family flagship, the Kamptal Reserve: an assemblage of single-vineyard parcels around Langenlois, vines averaging some 45 years old, fermented in stainless steel and left at least a year on the lees before bottling. The left bank of the Kamp brings the zip and the minerality, the right bank the creaminess and the length. 2015 was one of the great warm, dry vintages of modern Austria, and a wine built on lees and loess rather than oak was always going to age with grace. Eleven years on, held back by the winery and sealed under screw cap, it has become something Grüner rarely gets the chance to be. In the glass, it pours a deep straw-gold. The nose has moved past green apple into baked quince, honeyed pear, chamomile and beeswax, with the variety's white pepper and lentil now reading as a warm, smoky spice. On the palate, it is rounded and waxy yet still bone-dry and precise, the acidity fully intact, with a saline mineral grip and a long, savory finish that more than one guest will mistake for white Burgundy.