Betsy was working matinee, I marinated some pork chops (sadly
supermarket) in a white wine and garlic mix. Served on patio with
leftover butternutsquash risotto and salad, the wine on a lovely
September day was the 2005 Nigl "Kremser Freiheit" Grüner Veltliner.
I found a little less fruity but deeper than the 2004 version (which I
liked a lot). Lots of damp rock and mineral notes, a little pepper and
spice. Complex for an $11 wine. If the bottom end bottling is like
this, the Privat must be great (I think Michael Pronay already praised
it). Gotta find it! The basic bottling gets a
B/B+, A- for value.


Grade disclaimer: I'm a very easy grader, basically A is an excellent
wine, B a good wine, C mediocre. Anything below C means I wouldn't
drink at a party where it was only choice. Furthermore, I offer no
promises of objectivity, accuracy, and certainly not of consistency.

In article . com,
"DaleW" wrote:

Betsy was working matinee, I marinated some pork chops (sadly
supermarket) in a white wine and garlic mix. Served on patio with
leftover butternutsquash risotto and salad, the wine on a lovely
September day was the 2005 Nigl "Kremser Freiheit" Grüner Veltliner.
I found a little less fruity but deeper than the 2004 version (which I
liked a lot). Lots of damp rock and mineral notes, a little pepper and
spice. Complex for an $11 wine. If the bottom end bottling is like
this, the Privat must be great (I think Michael Pronay already praised
it). Gotta find it! The basic bottling gets a
B/B+, A- for value.


Grade disclaimer: I'm a very easy grader, basically A is an excellent
wine, B a good wine, C mediocre. Anything below C means I wouldn't
drink at a party where it was only choice. Furthermore, I offer no
promises of objectivity, accuracy, and certainly not of consistency.

Quick question. When you make the butternut squash risotto are you using
Butternut Squash soup or puree. I've tried it both ways and the soup
comes out slightly better for me.

This was first time she made (from Williams Sonoma catalog recipe!).
Called for puree, she chose recipe because she had a squash and made
own. But I had pointed out during dinner she could have used the liter
carton of squash soup that has sat in pantry for a year (teenagers
chose stuff, then ...). I like squash, but I have to say this risotto
was too sweet for me.


Lawrence Leichtman wrote:
In article . com,
"DaleW" wrote:

Betsy was working matinee, I marinated some pork chops (sadly
supermarket) in a white wine and garlic mix. Served on patio with
leftover butternutsquash risotto and salad, the wine on a lovely
September day was the 2005 Nigl "Kremser Freiheit" Grüner Veltliner.
I found a little less fruity but deeper than the 2004 version (which I
liked a lot). Lots of damp rock and mineral notes, a little pepper and
spice. Complex for an $11 wine. If the bottom end bottling is like
this, the Privat must be great (I think Michael Pronay already praised
it). Gotta find it! The basic bottling gets a
B/B+, A- for value.


Grade disclaimer: I'm a very easy grader, basically A is an excellent
wine, B a good wine, C mediocre. Anything below C means I wouldn't
drink at a party where it was only choice. Furthermore, I offer no
promises of objectivity, accuracy, and certainly not of consistency.

Quick question. When you make the butternut squash risotto are you using
Butternut Squash soup or puree. I've tried it both ways and the soup
comes out slightly better for me.

"DaleW" wrote:

... the wine on a lovely September day was the 2005 Nigl
"Kremser Freiheit" Grüner Veltliner. I found a little less
fruity but deeper than the 2004 version (which I liked a lot).
Lots of damp rock and mineral notes, a little pepper and spice.
Complex for an $11 wine. If the bottom end bottling is like
this, the Privat must be great (I think Michael Pronay already
praised it). Gotta find it! The basic bottling gets a B/B+, A-
for value.

Marting Nigl is one of the very few guys where you can take just
about every single bottling and get top quality for the price.

Thus said, every wine is available also under screwcaps, and
Martin really knows when a wine is ready to be bottled, a
decision that is much more crucial with screwcaps than with
corks.

I don't know whether your retailer offers Nigl's wines with
screwcaps, but if not - and if you care for them, of course! -,
you should ask for them, to show that there is demand. Maybe the
message gets up the chain and back to Martin ...

M.

thanks Michael. The KF was under screwcap (as was 2004 if I recall
correctly). I understood that some bottles of the 2004 Privat were
under screwcap, but think mine are natural cork. I'd prefer to find the
2005 under Stelvin, and will tell retailers that.

"DaleW" wrote:

I'd prefer to find the 2005 under Stelvin, and will tell
retailers that.

nitpicking

Nigl doesn't use Stelvin (www.stelvin.pechiney.com) caps, but
German made MALA capsules (www.mala.de).

/nitpicking

;-)

M.

In article .com,
"DaleW" wrote:

This was first time she made (from Williams Sonoma catalog recipe!).
Called for puree, she chose recipe because she had a squash and made
own. But I had pointed out during dinner she could have used the liter
carton of squash soup that has sat in pantry for a year (teenagers
chose stuff, then ...). I like squash, but I have to say this risotto
was too sweet for me.


Lawrence Leichtman wrote:
In article . com,
"DaleW" wrote:

Betsy was working matinee, I marinated some pork chops (sadly
supermarket) in a white wine and garlic mix. Served on patio with
leftover butternutsquash risotto and salad, the wine on a lovely
September day was the 2005 Nigl "Kremser Freiheit" Grüner Veltliner.
I found a little less fruity but deeper than the 2004 version (which I
liked a lot). Lots of damp rock and mineral notes, a little pepper and
spice. Complex for an $11 wine. If the bottom end bottling is like
this, the Privat must be great (I think Michael Pronay already praised
it). Gotta find it! The basic bottling gets a
B/B+, A- for value.


Grade disclaimer: I'm a very easy grader, basically A is an excellent
wine, B a good wine, C mediocre. Anything below C means I wouldn't
drink at a party where it was only choice. Furthermore, I offer no
promises of objectivity, accuracy, and certainly not of consistency.

Quick question. When you make the butternut squash risotto are you using
Butternut Squash soup or puree. I've tried it both ways and the soup
comes out slightly better for me.

Funny I did the same recipe from the William Sonoma Catalogue but used
the soup instead because the puree looked like it had too much sugar in
it. The soup was not at all sweet.

Actually, good to know. I try to avoid saying Clorox or Xerox, I should
be more precise (more general, yet more accurate) re closures. I should
go out to recycling and look - are these closures as long as the
Stelvins?

"DaleW" wrote:

Actually, good to know. I try to avoid saying Clorox or Xerox, I
should be more precise (more general, yet more accurate) re
closures. I should go out to recycling and look - are these
closures as long as the Stelvins?

All so-called 30 x 60 mm "long caps" - manufactured by Pechiney,
Mala, Auscap or others - are exactly the same size, given by the
form of the neck of the bottle. In principle they are all of equal
high quality, although not always exactly the same. Patrick Johner
from Kaiserstuhl (Baden, Germany) reported that capsules from
different producers needed different pressures during the roll-on
process.

The reason Martin Nigl used Mala instead of Stelvin, however, has
nothing to do with quality criteria: Mala was much more flexible
in delivering non-standard capsules, i.e. printed with the Nigl
logo.

M.