E & M Berger

Charm and value typify these wines. Clean, cultured-yeast wines with lots of primary fruit, yet aging superbly. The Veltliners are zingy and spicy; in soft years like 2000 they have a winsome ‘sweet’ vegetality (the red beet aspect); in years like 2001 they have more lift and cut. Cultured yeasts give them all a similar profile; fresh, long in middle and finish, polished, with a finely doughy aftertaste; clean, pure through and through, vital, frisky and crisp. This is a father/son estate of fourteen hectares. Half of the land consists of south-facing loess terraces with locally renowned names. Vines are Riesling, Veltliner, Pinot Blanc and the “C” word. There’s some land on the Gedersdorf plateau that’s planted to red varieties. All the wines are made dry, of course. They use cultured yeasts to get slow fermentations and to preserve the utmost CO2. Berger is all stainless steel, of course. Technology for controlling fermentation temperatures, by no means universal in Austria, has been in use here since 1990.

Vineyard area: 18 hectares
•Annual production: 5,400 cases
•Top sites: Gebling, Steingraben, Zehetnerin
•Soil types: Loess, stony clay, gravelly loess
•Grape varieties: 50% Grüner Veltliner, 10% Riesling, 10% Welschriesling, 20% Zweigelt, 10% other varieties