How to build a cellar on a budget: a guide to central Europe

This instalment of my guide to starting a cellar on a budget is devoted to European wine-producing countries east of either France or Italy. The most rewarding cellar candidate from this vast area is possibly not obvious: German Riesling. This is a category of wine that can outlast almost all others. Many years ago, Hugh Johnson, with whom I co-author The World Atlas of Wine, and I hosted a tasting in Frankfurt that demonstrated that a fine Mosel Riesling could outlast red bordeaux.

No matter where in the world it is grown, the Riesling grape makes wines that can outlast those made from Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc. This is true even of relatively inexpensive examples. And the great thing about Riesling is that it develops more nuanced flavours as it ages. I have 1971s in my cellar that I’m in no hurry to open. Admittedly, I have already opened the 1976s because that was an especially hot year and one of the things that preserves German Riesling is its high level of acidity, which is less pronounced in hotter years.

As for which German vintage to lay down currently, it is easier to identify the less obvious candidates. 2019 and 2020 are especially promising. Many 2018s are a little low in acidity. But more recently growers have become more adept at coping with the hotter summers and even some 2022s are surprisingly well-constituted. One notably instructive vintage plagued by rain and so much acidity that the wines in youth were uncomfortably tart was 2010, but those picked relatively late are just starting to drink well.

All this applies to classic Rieslings with words such as Kabinett, Spätlese, Auslese, Beerenauslese and Trockenbeerenauslese in their names, indicating increasing levels of sweetness roughly in that order — the sweeter the wine, the lower the alcohol and, in general, the longer the wine’s life.

But what of modern dry (trocken) German wine? I asked Klaus Peter Keller, a champion exponent of it, who has put Rheinhessen on the map. He feels that 30 or more years’ ageing is no problem for the most lauded of Germany’s dry Rieslings, the Grosse Gewächse (“GGs”). “We recently tasted 2001, 2002 and 2003 [a very hot vintage] and they were still young with no signs of fading,” Keller reports.

Germany’s other classic white wine grape, Silvaner, a speciality of the Franken region, can also age well, but a bit faster than Riesling. As for the new red Spätburgunders from Germany, so much more accomplished today than when they first appeared at the end of the last century, they can age almost as long as their counterparts from Burgundy, sometimes longer.

Wines grown in Austria’s rather warmer climate tend not to last quite as long as their German cousins, but Austria also has a long-lived white-wine grape speciality, Grüner Veltliner. In 2002 I took part in a blind tasting in London in which 13 mature Grüner Veltliners were pitted against 17 handpicked top Chardonnays, including seven highly respected burgundies. It was surprisingly easy to confuse a fine Grüner with a fine Chardonnay. The top-scoring wine was a 1990 Grüner Veltliner Smaragd from Emmerich Knoll, one of the most admired producers in Austria’s celebrated Wachau region.

Like fine white burgundy (and fine dry German Rieslings), the better Grüners are single-vineyard wines which can offer all sorts of interesting variations and comparisons. And, perhaps the clincher, the prices of top German and Austrian wines are generally much friendlier than those of top burgundies. The same is true of Austria’s signature red-wine grape Blaufränkisch. It is enjoying increasing popularity and can deserve up to 15 years in bottle to show its best. There are fascinating regional differences to be explored between, for instance, Leithaberg, Eisenberg and Carnuntum.

In Hungary, Blaufränkisch is known as Kékfrankos and can make equally ageworthy, lively reds of real character. Cabernet Franc can also shine over many years. The hotspots for red winemaking are Eger and Villany but sweet, white Tokaj is the most famous Hungarian wine by far and, by reputation at least, lasts forever. But dry versions of the main Tokaj grape Furmint are making their mark.

Croatian wines can be delicious and can age well. Eastern European specialist and Master of Wine Caroline Gilby suggests Brda in western Slovenia as a source of cellar interest in the form of long-lived reds and their specialist white wine grape Rebula. She also has experience of top Bulgarian answers to red bordeaux continuing to evolve for more than 10 years, though they are not always easy to find. She claims the best examples of the Bulgarian red-wine grape Mavrud are also worth ageing. And The Wine Society’s eastern European buyer Freddy Bulmer nominates the southern Bulgarian grape speciality Melnik as a suitable cellar candidate.

I certainly agree that the Vranac/Vranec grape found in North Macedonia and Montenegro is a grape that makes wines very obviously destined to age well — and younger examples are great value.

As for Greece, a favourite source of fine wine, obvious cellar candidates are the reds of Naoussa based on the fashionable Xinomavro grape. My two colleagues who are even keener on Greek wine than me cannot agree on the ageing ability of Greece’s most famous wine, the dry whites of Santorini based on the Assyrtiko grape. I recently had a 2018 in magnum from one of my favourite producers, Argyros, and thought it was already at its peak. But wine writer Tara Q Thomas swears by seriously aged examples from the likes of Haridimos Hatzidakis and Artemis Karamolegos, describing them as “one of the greatest bargains of the universe!” 

The better examples of Santorini Assyrtiko are so delicious when young that you may feel there are young reds that more obviously need ageing. From Lebanon and Turkey, for instance.

In the UK, Tanners have one of the most comprehensive and affordable selections of wine from what they call “South East Europe and Asia”. As James Tanner says of the region, “the geographer in me says that going east, there are plenty of vineyards on a similar latitude to Bordeaux, and then going south into hotter climes such as Greece, 1,000m-high vineyards can produce some very fine wines indeed.”

Tasting notes, scores and suggested drink dates on Purple Pages of JancisRobinson.com. International stockists on Wine-searcher.com

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