Last evening was a flower day, so I decided to go for a semi-aged Gruner Veltliner from one of Austria's most prominent producers, Franz Hirtzberger (look at this website, it looks amazing here), and I accompanied this with a dish of slow-roasted arctic char with lemon and mustard seed topping, a recipe found on epicurious.com (I often wonder whether wine should accompany food, or vice-versa, I know I sometimes create food to go with an individual bottle of wine that I want to drink, I guess it depends on the situation). The fish was excellent and the topping was lovely, quite rich with a buttery texture, and served with new potatoes and a basic salad with a mild lemon dressing. As part of my effort to transform myself from Fatboy into Waifboy, I decided to go for a healthy dinner.
I picked up the wine, a 2004 Smaragd Gruner Veltliner (Rotes Tor vineyard), recently at a store that was having an Austrian wine closeout, it was reduced from $45 to $18, which seems like a splendid deal to me. I decanted it an hour and a half before drinking as it seemed closed upon opening (if you see what I mean), and it slowly evolved and opened up over the next 4 hours. Unfortunately the lemon/mustard seed topping was a bit too rich to go with the wine, so I didn't really drink much of it with the food, a shame since GV is an excellent food wine.
It was a lot lighter and less intense than I anticipated it being, there really wasn't too much there when I uncorked it, but with (a lot of) time it did start to express itself very nicely. To start with there were mainly citrus and mineral aromas, but they evolved into lovely peach blossom and honey notes whilst retaining the strong minerality. The palate reflected the nose nicely, citrus and peach, with a little honey and the stony minerality, and also the pepper that is so typical of GV, with nice acidity, followed by a good, long finish. It did take a long time to really open up, and I was left wondering if it was in some strange stage of evolution (thoughts Nahthern?) as it was quite light and reluctant to really express itself fully, though after 4 hours it was getting there. I have another bottle, and I'm going to keep it for a few years to find out in any case.
Right, tonight it's still a flower day, so it's fillet steak and either an '01 Gevrey Chambertin (Vieilles Vignes), or a very shady-looking bottle of a '97 Tornesi Brunello, which ought to be awesome, but it has clearly been mistreated somewhere down the line as it has an extremely low ullage for its age - I should have guessed something was up since it was extremely cheap too (there's always a slight risk ordering online). I will report back later...
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