Ohlzelt Gruner Leader

Grapes: Gruner Veltliner

Region: Kamptal, Austria

Vintage: 2021

Viticulture: Organic

Soils: Granite

Vinification: Fermented and aged in stainless steel

Aging: In acacia barrels on the lees.

Fining or Filtering: None

Sulfur: Minimal

Notes from the Importer: In a region famous (infamous?) for broad, masculine, gooey and textural wines, Barbara Öhlzelt is content to quietly flip the paradigm completely on its head.

She farms only around seven hectares in Austria’s Kamptal, quietly making some of the most precise, angelic, energetic wines in the region.

Barbara is soft-spoken but intense, strongly opinionated, deeply passionate, playful and caring. Yes, she has great parcels in the Heiligenstein, Kamptal’s most historic and justly famous site (it’s a mix of various types of ancient primary and volcanic rock and often described as a geologic wonder), but ask her what her favorite site is and she’ll tell you it’s the Kogelberg, where her 65-year-old Riesling vines are a marvel. She won’t badmouth her fellow growers, but it’s also not lost on anyone that she is trying to do something very, very different.