Grüner Veltliner – distinctly groovy grape

Austria 7 Burgundy 0 is the unlikely score of a fascinating blind tasting of top-quality white wines held in London last week. (See the results in detail.) Seven of the extremely able tasting group's ten favourite wines were Austrian, whereas five of the seven least-liked came from Burgundy. So how come Austrian wine is still seen as a joke?

Perhaps partly because the Austrians, cowed by the wildly exaggerated effects of a long-gone wine scandal and more recent political developments, have been slow to blow their own trumpet. For this was the fifth such tasting in various parts of...