2020 Sohm & Kracher Gruner Veltliner Lion Niederosterreich 750 ml

A collaboration between one of the greatest sommeliers in the world and a legendary wine estate, Sohm & Kracher’s Lion Grüner Veltliner is one of the world’s great white-wine values—a next level bottling from two passionately focused wine professionals.

This bottling is the brainchild of Aldo Sohm—wine director at MICHELIN-three-starred Le Bernardin and a winner of the “Best Sommelier in the World” competition—and Gerhard Kracher, one of the legends of Austrian winemaking, known for dessert wines that dot MICHELIN-starred wine lists across the globe and command prices that rival d’Yquem.

Sohm & Kracher work out of Austria’s Weinviertel (“wine quarter”), a region with a long growing history but lots of hidden-gem vineyards, allowing the pair to access top sites at accessible prices—and then pass those savings along. Their 2020 Lion has all the minerality and precision of a federspiel from the Wachau, but without the $40+ price tag.

This wine is what happens when two towering figures make an affordable bottling from one of the world’s great grapes. When we caught up to talk, Aldo described Grüner Veltliner as “a great food all-arounder” and we agree—his Lion is a bottling that’s going to thrill lovers of crisp, unoaked white wines across the board. As you might expect, not much of this is made—and most of it is snapped up by top restaurants in New York.

The 2020 Lion Grüner Veltliner is incredibly adaptable: As Aldo told us, it’s a wine “you can have on the beach, you can have it with a salad, sushi… it works whenever!”