Ingrid Groiss Riesling Braitenpuechtorff

The simplest introduction? This wine is scrumptious.

But I like a longer story (at least, a little longer) when I’m drinking, so here is the long version. Ingrid Groiss and I discussed it personally in the past, yet I find that David Schildknecht, former reviewer for Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate, offers the most succinct take:

“Tapping into insights as well as vines planted by her grandmother, Ingrid Groiss began single-handedly growing and bottling wine in 2010 after a brief but frustrating attempt to bridge the generational gap by collaborating with her parents, who had always sold off their grapes.

“‘It’s a bit sad,’ she relates. ‘Breitenwaida is a mini-village with 200 inhabitants but despite our diminutive size we have four Kellergassen’ – the Austro-Hungarian-wide lanes lined with narrow-fronted cuveries and cellars – ‘and now I’m the only one who makes wine.’”

Now my personal note:

All of the grapes for this wine come from a plot of Riesling planted in 1951 by her grandmother. The "Braitenpuechtorff” designation is a clever mash-up (if you read German, which I don't so I was left clueless too) of the names of the three towns where her grandmother's vineyards are located. At that time, Grandma Groiss’s dream might have been to have a winery of her own. But that didn’t take hold until 71 years later. Fighting her parents against the tradition of selling off all their fruit to the local co-op, Ingrid founded a winery from her grandmother’s vineyards. The results are outstanding.

This, the Riesling Braitenpiechtorff gives up delicious notes of mandarin orange, golden apples, pomelo and kaffir lime leaf on the nose. On the palate, it’s beautifully citric and precise, yet brimming with purity and clarity. Ingrid’s wines have always been amazing to me – so utterly darn drinkable and yet so complex. Charming and intriguing, inviting and developing, all rolled into one. I tasted with her at VinVineum (the major Austrian trade fair) earlier this year in Vienna and frankly, while no one else acknowledges it, I think she is one of Austria’s best winemakers to date.