My two weeks of intensive tasting in Austria in early September convinced me that 2023 is an excellent vintage for the dry white wines the Alpine Republic is best known for. And the hundreds of additional wines that Associate Editor Claire Nesbitt tasted in Hong Kong – together, we tasted a total of 969 – confirmed this impression.
In most cases, the producers were rightly pleased with the ripe fruit, generosity and good balance of the dry white wines from this vintage. But the real story is way more complex than that.
It took a long time before I realized how 2023 had nearly turned into a disaster as a result of the storm that dumped a pile of rain and in some places, hail, on the vineyards of the Danube regions on Sept. 13 of that year. The harvest for earlier-ripening grapes, particularly for entry-level gruner veltliner, had been going swimmingly until those rains came.
Late, heavy rains are something producers in temperate climate zones like Austria frequently worry about, but hail that late in the season is a total nightmare. That’s because the vines are already pumping sugars into the grapes, which are also softening as they ripen. If the skin is broken by a hailstones, the sugars suddenly become accessible to fungi and other microbes. The danger of spoilage is huge.
I have to thank Andreas Wickhoff MW of the Brundlmayer winery in the Kamptal region for making me fully aware of the seriousness of what had happened in 2023, rather than focusing solely on the surprisingly good results, like some of his colleagues did. Instead he told it straight.
“We had four days of very hard work to precisely remove the hail-affected fruit from eight hectares of vineyards, which lead to crop losses there between 20 percent and 100 percent,“ Wickhoff explained. “We were very lucky that the weather was beautiful from then on until we picked our top sites from Oct. 23.”
Thankfully, during my September tastings I didn’t taste negative rot from hail damage once. Rather, what Claire Nesbitt and I primarily encountered was the aromatic ripeness and harmonious acidities of a very good vintage.
I think it is really significant that apart from that one day of heavy rain and hail, Austria was luckier with the weather during the 2023 growing season than neighboring Germany. The summer was warm and sunny but most vineyard soils held enough water for the vines to avoid drought stress. Then, after the storm, came that Indian summer, which was decisive for the quality of the vintage.
I agree with Wickhoff’s judgment that at least for the leading producers, “the 2023 vintage has great concentration and simultaneously excellent balance.” The fireworks are to be found among the single-vineyard wines, but entry-level wines from top producers like Brundlmayer are excellent value for money, with great opportunities for bargain hunters.
If you are looking for a vintage comparison, then I agree with the frequently cited parallel with the 2019 vintage rather than the crisper and more vibrant 2021, both of which were also excellent years. But even that is just the beginning of the story of contemporary Austrian wines.
It’s almost impossible to entirely separate an assessment of the 2023 vintage from the recent changes in wine styles at a number of leading producers. The earth has moved and continues to move, and too little has been written about this by some of our colleagues.
Lukas Pichler of F.X. Pichler in the Wachau leads the charge away from opulence and weight toward freshness and brilliance, and with the 2023 vintage he realized that goal with bravura.
You taste all of this and a lot more in the F.X. Pichler Riesling Wachau Ried Steinertal 2023, which has literally breathtaking Amalfi lemon and wild herb freshness. Although it is no heavier, the F.X. Pichler Riesling Wachau Ried Kellerberg 2023 is every bit as amazing with a deep well of peach and mango fruit married to extraordinary racy purity. It is the ultimate in minerality. These perfect wines are like contrasting twins, both having a similar analytical profile, with just under 13 percent alcohol.
Although F.X. Pichler’s winemaker, Lucas Pichler, doesn’t mince words, he’s a thoughtful guy and not the loudmouth figurehead of a new movement. However, his example has certainly helped inspire and motivate less well-known winemakers like Markus Huber of the tiny Traisental region.
Huber is a perfectionist and free thinker who has been making stunning wines for many years. With the 2023 vintage he changed his grape processing, which sounds like a minor detail in the long winemaking process. However, together with the long-term effects of excellent organic viticulture, this enabled him to hit the bullseye.
The Traisental is significantly cooler than the Wachu or even the Kamptal, and is unusual for having calcareous conglomerate rocks rather than the gneis (a granitic rock with a layered structure) or the loess (a compacted wind-blown powdery material) that are typical of the greater Danube region.
The combination often gives striking results, but the perfect Markus Huber Riesling Traisental Berg EL 2023 and almost perfect Markus Huber Grüner Veltliner Berg EL 2023 are both giants of energy and finesse. The riesling has a whole meadow of wildflower and wild herb aromas. The gruner veltliner has terrific pink and yellow grapefruit freshness. Both are incredibly charismatic, yet invigorating and super-precise wines.
However, it would be a mistake to suggest that all producers are moving in the direction of sleekness and crystalline purity. The richly textural and aromatic style of single-vineyard wines that was perfected by the leading producers of the Wachau in the 1990s and the first years of this century is still very much alive.
“I haven’t fundamentally changed our late-picked style,” said Franz Hirtzberger Jr., who runs his eponymous winery in the village of Spitz in western Wachau. “However, the new cellar has enabled me to be more precise and achieve greater finesse, which was my goal.”
That is all true of the Franz Hirtzberger Riesling Wachau Ried Singerriedel Smaragd 2023, which has an amazingly wide spectrum of stone and citrus fruit aromas. Yes, it is rich and mouthfilling, but it also has a super-cool and bright finish that’s incredibly long. It is properly dry and is also the fourth perfect-scoring wine in this report.
Sadly, you don’t find this kind of balance in the wines of all Wachau producers. At the official presentation of the 2023 vintage by the Vinea Wachau association, I tasted quite a number of wines with clearly perceptible alcohol. Let’s be frank – it would be a miracle if a riesling Smaragd with 14.5 percent alcohol or a gruner veltliner Smaragd with 15.5 percent alcohol did not taste slightly warm!
Some of these wines have enough vivid fruit and spice aromas that they’re still good to drink, but a few were really problematic. High-end wines tend to be consumed over a period of years, and I’m skeptical about how they’ll taste after the youthful fruit aromas start fading in a year or so. There’s much less risk putting Austrian dry whites with 12 percent to 13.5 percent alcohol in your cellar than those with 14.5 percent-plus levels.
These problematic wines were the result of producers picking for “optimum” ripeness, then small weaknesses in the winemaking that might not have shown up at lower levels of alcohol. It sounds good when producers say that nothing changes in the Wachau, but this is simply not true. Clearly, some of them need to do a rethink to better adapt to the new climate situation.
If we move the focus away from the Danube regions, then it becomes clear that 2023 was not uniformly excellent throughout Austria. The Steiermark, which lies far to the south of the Danube regions, has a completely different weather system than the Danube region. It was hit by heavy rains from cyclones that came northward from the Adriatic – something that happens quite frequently and the reason organic viticulture is particularly challenging here.
“2023 was a horror year for the vineyard cultivation,” said Armin Tement of the Tement winery in Sudsteiermark. “From May until September, we worked every single day to keep the grapes and foliage healthy. Downy mildew and hail drastically reduced the crop during that period.” All his hard work resulted in an average yield just over 20 hectoliters per hectare, which is very small for white wine grapes in a moist climate.
Many of the best wine from the Steiermark wines we tasted were late-released 2022 single-vineyard wines. The Wohlmuth Sauvignon Blanc Südsteiermark Ried Edelschuh GSTK 2022 smells like walking into a flower shop and has a note of sushi ginger, making it a unique, elegant expression of a grape that can so easily be so loud and one-dimensional.
The Erwin Sabathi Chardonnay Südsteiermark Ried Pössnitzberg Alte Reben GSTK 2022 has aromas ranging from toasted hazelnuts to mini bananas, accentuated by tantalizing oak. The interplay of creaminess and chalky character is stunning.
The Burgenland and Leithaberg appellations also give some great Chardonnays, and the best I tasted during the last months was from winemaker Andi Kollwentz. His Kollwentz Chardonnay Burgenland Gloria 2022 is a masterpiece of chalky and flinty minerality with a super-elegant lemony acidity. Kollwentz has a long track record for great chardonnay, but I think his 2021 and 2022 come closest to hitting the bullseye.
When it comes to the red wines that are crucial for Burgenland and a number of other smaller regions, the current vintages are 2021 and 2022, depending on the length of maturation each producer gives the wines in cask and bottle. I was really surprised to find how 2022 was every bit as exciting as 2021, usually slightly bolder.
The most amazing red wine I encountered in all of Austria was the almost perfect Moric Blaufränkisch Burgenland Lutzmannsburg Alte Reben 2022. Tasting it was like diving into a deep pool of violets and discovering a wealth of earthy and spicy notes. It has incredible concentration and finesse.
However, there were a slew of stunning wines from the blaufrankisch grape. On this basis, I think it can now be said that as exciting as some Austrian red wine cuvees are, and as individual as some pinot noir and sankt laurent reds are, blufrankisch is now clearly the star of Austrian reds.
I think the background of the blaufrankisch grape deserves to be mentioned. It was first mentioned in the mid-18th century in the Thermenregion, just south of Vienna, from where it spread to nearby Burgenland and Hungary, where it became known as kekfrankos. It landed in Germany during the second half of the 19th century, and there it is called lemberger.
Originally the grape also went by many names, and blaufrankisch was chosen by the International Ampelographic Commission in 1875. The complexity of the naming plus the lack of exciting wines during the 1960s, 70s and 80s is the reason it gained the reputation of being a second- or third-class grape variety.
Clonal selection to promote higher yields didn’t help, quantity being gained mainly by lengthening the tip of the cluster and expanding the shoulders. In particular, those long tips are often a source of acidity and green tannin. Hence the importance of Alte Reben, or old vines from the time pre-clonal selection.
It was the Austrian top sommelier Uwe Schiefer who started pushing blaufrankisch in the direction of the new wines during the late 1990s. The new style emphasizes cautious tannin extraction during fermentation (because the grape is naturally rich in tannin), then maturing in medium to large cooperage of more or less neutral oak. The latter is all about displaying the aromatic complexity of the grape and the elegance it has when not overworked in the cellar.
I tasted Uwe Schiefer’s excellent current releases, and the Schiefer Blaufränkisch Burgenland Ried Reihburg Eisenberg an der Pinka 2021 was sensationally concentrated and vibrant. It is still very young, but definitely belongs in the Top 10 blaufrankisch of modern times.
In recent years, the Gernot Heinrich, Anita & Hans Nittnaus and Sommer (Leo Sommer) wineries in the Leithaberg have made ever more exciting wines that are expressive with a cool climate personality. This region’s wines stand out because most of them come from grapes that are grown in the limestone soils of the Alps’ eastern foothills.
In many respects, the Anita & Hans Nittnaus Blaufränkisch Leithaberg Ried Gritschenberg 2021 is prototypical for these wines, showing incredible grace and finesse thanks to the interplay of very fine tannins with precise aromas of forest berries, candied orange and cinnamon.
Limestone is also a key element for the blaufrankisch reds from the Spitzerberg section of the Carnuntum. Dorli Muhr is the star winemaker here, both because she embraces the modern style of blaufrankisch in an uncompromising way, and because of perfectionism in the vineyard.
The Dorli Muhr Blaufränkisch Carnuntum Ried Spitzerberg-Obere Spitzer EL 2021 has enormous structure, the fine tannins building to a fantastic crescendo at the finish. And the Dorli Muhr Blaufränkisch Ried Spitzerberg-Obere Roterd EL 2021 has a combination of concentration and refinement that reminded me of a Musigny Grand Cru from Burgundy, but with a slew of spices like you never get in Burgundy! Mirror, mirror on the wall…
And what about the 2024 harvest? Well, the extremely warm summer meant it started early. When I arrived in Burgenland in the first days of September, most of the harvest was already in. The fine weather continued until Sept. 10, when rain arrived.
The huge storm that hit the Danube regions delayed my departure from Vienna Airport, and I arrived home in Germany 13 hours late. However, that’s nothing compared to the floods that hit the Wachau and a few places where its tributaries broke their banks, with 400 millimeters, or more than 16 inches, of rain falling within five days.
This is almost like history repeating itself. But for us, the crucial thing is how the wines taste, and that we will tell you next year.
– Stuart Pigott, Senior Editor
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