(Editorial team / Claude Auguste / Manfred Klimek / Photo: Lenzmark, Runwaylm)
This project could well have gone wrong. It wouldn’t be the first ambitious project in the world of wine to fail – for whatever reason. Two winemakers, with an age gap of almost three decades, two very different life stories, and an ambition that aims for nothing less than to take an entire grape variety out of its regional comfort zone. And then there’s Grüner Veltliner – a variety that, whilst respected internationally, is rarely truly sought after outside Austria and Germany. Too much emphasis on origin, too little mystique for international marketing, too little growing area, too little history beyond the Alpine region. Yet this is precisely where New Chapter comes in. And this is exactly why this project is more than just another ‘premium Veltliner’.
Markus Huber and Lenz Maria Moser represent two poles of Austrian viticulture: on the one hand, the meticulous site-focused winemaker from the Traisental, a vintner who has made precision, minimalism and cool elegance his hallmark; on the other, the global wine entrepreneur, shaped by generations of family tradition, yet with a horizon that has long since extended far beyond Europe. What unites them is not style, but ambition. And the determination to free Grüner Veltliner from national complacency.
New Chapter is a statement: this wine does not seek to be ‘typical’, but rather competitive. Internationally accessible. Not as an exotic curiosity, but as a serious white wine on a par with the great benchmarks. The fact that James Suckling awards it 95 points is less a marketing story than a symptom. The jury sees here not a bonus for its origin, but consistent craftsmanship: fruit without fuss, oak without dominance, structure without harshness. The wine is well-built, perhaps even engineered. But: it has broad appeal, a Veltliner that captures the global palate just as Antinori’s Tignanello does.
The crux of the matter lies deeper. Grüner Veltliner is not a variety with extensive vineyard area. It is no Chardonnay, no Sauvignon Blanc, no Pinot Grigio. It is limited – geographically, climatically, culturally. Anyone thinking of it on an international scale must take a different approach. Not through sheer volume, but through precision. Not through regional folklore, but through the definition of a style. This is precisely where the idea behind Lenzmark comes in: a wine based on the principle of great blends, reassembled year after year, exclusively from the finest plots, with the aim of shaping a clearly recognisable style – regardless of vintage variations.
The fact that this style has found its strongest market in Dubai, of all places, is no coincidence, but rather a modern irony. In an Islamic country where alcohol is strictly regulated, New Chapter features on the wine lists of the finest restaurants. A place where wines are ordered not out of tradition, but out of curiosity. A place where provenance matters less than texture, balance and gastronomic suitability. Grüner Veltliner as a global food companion – that is perhaps the wisest interpretation of this variety of all.
A key part of this story, which should not be underestimated, is Lenz Maria Moser’s work in China. His involvement with the Changyu Group, where he has established his own winery under his name, has confronted him with a market that interprets wine in a completely different way to Europe: less historically, less sentimentally, but all the more analytically. What works in the glass? What lingers in the memory? What pairs well with food? These questions are incorporated into New Chapter – not as a compromise, but as a means of refinement. The wine thinks on an international scale, without denying its origins.
And Markus Huber? He provides the foundation: limestone, coolness, straightforwardness. The ridiculously small Traisental valley versus the vast vineyards of Burgundy, Tuscany or Bordeaux. Huber’s vineyards give the wine that stony calm which protects it from becoming run-of-the-mill. The ageing process – partly in stainless steel, partly in large oak barrels – is not a stylistic device, but a tool. Oak for flavour, never as a statement.
New Chapter is a very self-assured project that sells around 50,000 bottles a year on the international market and can increase this figure slightly. It doesn’t need an ‘Austrian’ label to succeed – and some in Austria take a bit of a dim view of this – with talk sometimes of an arrogant demeanour; bullshit. Because that is precisely where its strength lies. Perhaps that is the true innovative aspect of this project: viewing Grüner Veltliner not as a matter of national identity, but as an international opportunity.
Two winemakers, a bridge between generations, a wine that works where you’d least expect it. If that isn’t a new chapter, then we don’t know what one should look like.