So, we had the pleasure of a visit from Matthias Bauer who is the wine maker for the Emil Bauer Austrian wines that we had at our winter tasting last December. It was great to get to chat to Matthias about his wines and get to taste them again and really get an understanding of them and what he is trying to achieve with them.
The Bauer winery is a 5th generation family-owned winery based in the Wagram region of Austria, about 45mins outside of Vienna in a little village called Ottenthal. Growing the main grapes of the region, Gruner Veltliner, Riesling and one I had never heard of before our winter tasting, Roter Veltliner for the whites, and Zweigelt for the reds, with a few other international varieties to add to the mix, but we just looked at their traditional varieties today.
So, we started with the…
2022 Gruner Veltliner Reid Marienberg
This was just an absolutely textbook Gruner, you get these wonderful fruit characters delicately coming through with hints of stone fruit and then a touch of citrus on the finish to help clean the palate, the wine has a great acidity to it, which it needs and Matthias leaves a little residual sugar. Combining these, you get a wine that has this lovely, rounded softness and freshness without being an actual sweet wine, great on its own, as aperitif or with loads of different foods.
2023 Roter Veltliner Wagram
Now this was the one I was the most interested in, like I said, before our Winter Tasting I had never heard of the variety. Apparently according to Matthias 200 years ago this was more widely grown, but is more difficult to grow than its rival, Gruner Veltliner, and no they are not related, hence Gruner’s dominance for a long period, but now several producers are starting to bring it back.
As with the Gruner, you get these lovely stone fruit characters in the wine, but they are a little richer and deeper than the Gruner, you also get some fresh herbs and spice on the finish which is not there in the Gruner. Again, the acidity helps to balance out the residual sugar in this wine perfectly and giving you softness without making it a sweet wine.
2021 Riesling Wagram
This is that classic Riesling with loads of Apricot/Stone fruit and hints of blossom, this has a touch more residual sugar than the others, so this is far more of an off-dry style, but you do have a good acidity that helps to maintain the freshness and stops it from being cloying.
We then moved onto his reds…
2022 Blauer Zweigelt Rubin
Now again, I’m a huge fan of Zweigelt, and this didn’t disappoint. Soft, fruit driven and easy drinking wine with loads of cherries and raspberries at the start with hints of cocoa, vanilla and cinnamon coming through in the finish. Just a hint of tannins helps to give the wine some grip and stop it being just a fruit bomb.
2021 V.E.1
This is very similar to the wine above, however bigger, richer and bolder is the only way to describe it. The fruit is bigger, richer with great depth and a lovely savouriness to the finish, the tannins are soft and silky and combine perfectly with the fruit and acidity that wine still has. You can see why it’s the next notch up!
I’m a huge fan of Austrian wines and tasted a lot over the years, but Emil Bauer has to be one of the most consistent and interesting wineries I’ve tasted over the last couple of years, even though I missed the Roter Veltliner for several years, not sure why. I would definitely recommend grabbing a bottle if you see it on the shelf.
We’ll have them back in stock soon!
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