Volker Wine Gruner Veltliner von Donabaum

About Volker Wine Gruner Veltliner von Donabaum

Volker Wine Gruner Veltliner von Donabaum is a crisp and bright Austrian white wine. Lime, salinity, white pepper, and citrus blossom.

About Volker Wine Company

Volker Donabaum, the founder of Volker Wines, has been in the wine industry practically since birth. He grew up on the Donabaum family estate in the Wachau in Austria, where the family has been making wine since 1833. Volker worked several harvests in Austria before working as an assistant winemaker in California, France, Italy, New Zealand, Australia, Oregon, and Canada. In 2012, Volker moved to New York City, where he imported and distributed wines from around the world. In 2018, at the encouragement of his favorite Texan, Volker moved to Houston.

About Gruner Veltliner

Grüner Veltliner is the signature grape of Austria and by far the nation’s most widely planted wine grape. As Austria battles its way back to stardom on the international wine market, crisp, spicy Grüner Veltliner has been its flagship wine. The finest Austrian expressions come from vineyards above the Danube River, in Wachau, Kremstal, and Kamptal.

Classic Grüner Veltliner wines show citrus aromas (lemon peel and grapefruit) complemented by stone fruit and fresh vegetal notes and the variety’s trademark hint of white pepper. But within this, there are two key styles of Grüner Veltliner wine. The first – lighter, fresher, and focused on minerality and citrus character – is typical of Weinviertel. The wine is often bottled with a slight spritz, to lift the wine and emphasize its fresh, fruity notes.

The second style – spicier, weightier, and more complex – is embodied by the top wines from the warmer Wachau, Kremstal, and Kamptal regions. These wines are richly textured and well structured and require several years in bottle before reaching developed maturity. While most wines from this grape variety are fermented and aged in stainless steel or large old oak casks, some modern-styled weightier examples might be made using smaller new oak barrels. With time they soften and take in honeyed, marmalade-like characteristics that match their attractive, deep golden hue. Some writers have noted similarities with mature white Burgundy.

The variety’s name might be hard to pronounce for the uninitiated, but Austria’s incisive marketers have turned this to their advantage, dubbing the variety “Gru-Ve” and even “Groovy”. Grüner means “green”, which neatly reflects both the variety’s yellow-green berries and the fresh green-pepper character that typifies Grüner Veltliner wine. Veltliner – a name shared by several European grape varieties (notably Roter Veltliner) – is thought to be a reference to the varieties’ possible origins in Valtellina.