One of our obsessions at Flatiron Wines is the every-day wines that you find in wine regions across the world – the wines that the locals actually drink, as opposed to the typically more expensive wines that are for export and sales. We’ve written extensively about Dolcetto in this context, not to mention more obscure wines like Pinot Auxerrois in Alsace. Today, we turn to another very fun category of these sorts of wines: 1-liter bottles of Gruner Veltliner.

As little as 20 years ago, if you wanted to drink Gruner in a one liter format, you would need to travel to Austria. There, you would need to leave Vienna and look for a rural Heuriger. A Heuriger is a tavern, often run by wine-makers, where simple fare is served and the wine producers offer wines from the latest vintage – wines that are fresh, fruity and in general very fun and drinkable.

So drinkable, in fact, that 750 ml just didn’t seem to be enough. So the Heurigers served fresh Gruner Veltliner in distinctive one-liter bottles. Around 20 years ago, we started to import them to the United States, and today you can usually find them at better (and more adventurous) wine shops across the country – and they represent excellent value.

Today, we want to tempt you with a one-liter bottle of Gruner from wine producer Franz Etz. While, sadly, inexpensive wines here in California so often mean something mass-produced and industrial, because of the Heuriger tradition in Austria the one-liter bargains of Gruner Veltliner are still produced in an artisanal fashion. This is true at Etz, which carefully farms some of the top sites in Austria’s famous Gruner villages just southeast of Langenlois.

Their wines do exactly what we love about 1L Gruner: they sizzle, they offer spice and pepper, and they offer refreshment. They are perfect week-night whites – and no, you don’t have to finish all 1000 milliliters in in one night!

Franz Etz Gruner Veltliner 2023 (1L) - $15.99