Product Description:

"On the terraced slopes of the "Hochrain" in Wösendorf, my Grüner Veltliner is thriving in deep loess soils. Here, the wines develop nutty and spicy tones with yellow fruit aromas. In comparison with the Veltliner from primary rock, the "Hochrain" is a precise example of how much the soil influences the character of the wine." -Winery

"Peter Veyder-Malberg has acquired a significant reputation inside Austria as both a viticultural and marketing advisor, having experienced a late-starting but varied wine career that included time in Napa, New Zealand, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland. In 2008, he founded Weingut Veyder-Malberg with the intention of acquiring and restoring ancient terraces in the Wachau. This includes dry-farmed sites along the little Spitz brook (notably in Bruck) – 'where,' he notes, 'steep stony vineyard slopes were easiest to acquire, from older coop members who are giving up;' where he resides; and where his winery occupies a former abattoir - but also sites such as the Buschenberg, which abuts the famed Klaus but is largely splintered into tiny holdings and has never had a champion. Veyder-Malberg is also re-propagating this site's ancient mass selections. He is almost single-handedly clearing the bush and re-building the terraces of the Brandstatt, a once-celebrated, but long-deserted, vineyard site at nose bleed elevation even by upper Spitzerbach standards, indeed, allegedly the highest in all of Lower Austria. As if his viticultural ambitions were not already daring enough, Veyder-Malberg has elected to go his own way stylistically as well, remaining outside of the Vinea Wachau growers association with its designations of Smaragd and Federspiel, whose styles in a sense Veyder-Malberg is attempting to marry (though he would insist, transcend) with emphasis on purity of fruit, mineral nuance, and moderate alcohol, accomplished inter alia through organic farming (including composting and manual weed control); typically day-long skin contact; slow pressing; spontaneous fermentations; low sulfur; and fearlessly extended elevage. He tends, in my judgment, to exaggerate his differences with his region's establishment and with what have become today's standard operating procedures, but there can be no doubt about the distinctively and deliciously different voice that emerges from his bottles, nor that his ambition and meticulousness are going to bear even more exciting fruits in the near future, whether or not this increasingly polarizes Austrian consumers as well as his fellow-vintners into those (as yet largely non-Wachauer!) for whom he is a hero and those for whom he is an irritant. Prices have been set high from the get-go and sales are and will continue to be almost exclusively through the trade." -David Schildknecht, Wine Advocate Issue #197