Crammed day. Keim comes into Chicago for 24 hours. We have an hour to meet before heading to our respective dinners. The bar at the Hyatt is the only thing our beatdown brains can come up with.
You don't see good friends often enough, so Keim goes for a bottle. My directions are
"white, not sweet and interesting." He says, "do you like Gruner Veltliner?" Nothing registers. It's so weird and gutteral a sound, I can't even make up a joke.
Here's my recollection Keim's tale:
> it's a white wine from Austria
> it's akin to a Riesling but never sweet
> people in the know feel that Riesling is the shizzle mcnizzle of wine
> Gruener is all that + it's not sweet
> it's more interesting than most other whites
Whatever we had was great, and made you forget all the cardboard chardonney you'd ever had.
He said it's a little hard to find on smaller wine lists, and sometimes it ain't cheap. I tried to find it in stores, and even big wine places had only a few options at best. I found bottles between $10 and $15 all of which were awesome.
Probing a little more, here's a story that seems to confirm this wine as an unsung hero:
Some years ago in a blind tasting whose judges were predominantly non-Austrians and whose wines were either Gruner Veltliner or white Burgundies, the Top wine and three of the top Five were Gruner Veltliner, beating up on blue-chip Grand Cru Burgundies costing six times as much. These results have been bracingly consistent regardless of venue and regardless of who makes up the panel and who chooses the wines. The most recent tasting was held in London: Jancis Robinson selected the Chardonnay and the tasters were overwhelmingly non-Austrains. Same result. The preponderant favorites and always the very top wines were Gruner Veltliners.
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