The Danube is White Hot in 2016
After a week of intensive tasting in the Wachau and the other wine regions in the Danube Valley of Austria we came to the conclusion that 2016 is an excellent vintage both for the indigenous grüner veltliner grape and for the sought-after dry rieslings. That was a major surprise, because when we arrived 2015 in the Danube had a far better reputation and the word was that 2016 was not so special, because of the difficult growing season.
Franz Hirtzberger of the eponymous estate in Spitz/Wachau explained the situation very well, “2016 was really as stupid as possible! First there was frost damage at the end of April, then we had plenty of rain into July, at the end of August and in September it was too dry, but you can’t irrigate that late so the grapes stopped ripening. In October we got the normal amount of rain, but this lead to some rot and that made the harvest complicated. In the end though it turned out to be a very fine and elegant vintage. The only problem is the quantity is about half of normal.” That last point means you will need to move quickly when the wines reach your market to be sure of obtaining the most highly-rated wines in this report.
We also found the high reputation of 2015 vintage rather exaggerated. The most successful 2015 dry whites from the Danube regions are rich and imposing wines, but some of the rest don’t live up to the hype. In these cases the problems are the high alcoholic content leading to an impression of heaviness and low acidity resulting in a lack of freshness. The generally cool climate Austria wine industry has been a major beneficiary of global warming, but 2015 was the second warmest growing season in Austria since 1767 (when record-taking began) and in some places the heat was too much of a good thing for the vines.
On average the 2016 dry whites from the Danube have 1% lower alcoholic content and 1 gram per liter more acidity than the 2015s and we found this gives them a more aromatic, mineral and elegant flavor profile than the wines of the previous vintage. Those are exactly the qualities we look for in the dry whites from the Danube region of Austria and we therefore regard 2016 as being one of the best vintages so far this century!
If you look at the spectacular steep terraced vineyards of the Wachau in the narrow section of the Danube Valley upstream from the city of Krems, then it’s hard to believe they wouldn’t give great wines. Since irrigation was introduced there from the late 1970s the region has been consistently making dry whites that combine ripeness with great balance. The Wachau was the source of a slew of our highest-rated wines, including the 2016 Ried Kellerberg Riesling from F.X. Pichler in Loiben with 100 points. However, with just 1344 hectares of vineyards it’s even smaller than the Côte de Nuits in Burgundy (1,700 hectares).
The view of Weissenkirchen in the Wachau from the great Achleiten site. (Photo credit: Gerhard Elze)
The combination of small size and fame results in relatively high prices for the single-vineyard wines of the full-bodied Smaragd wines (mostly with 13% plus natural alcohol, although some are labeled with 12.5%). The Vinea Wachau winemakers association to which almost all the region’s producers belong uses an unusual three-tier wine classification system with light wines below 11.5% alcohol being marketed as Steinfeder, and medium-bodied ones between 11.5% and 12.9% selling under the Federspiel designation. As Lucas Pichler of the F.X. Pichler estate said, “in the Wachau we’re a bit like the Gallic village in Asterix.”
The neighboring regions of the Kremstal (2,368 hectares), Kamptal (3,907 hectares), the Wagram (2,720 hectares) and the Traisental (815 hectares) all have a lot in common with the Wachau, benefiting from the same basic climatic situation, and some common geology too. In each of them the most fundamental differences between vineyards sites results from variation in altitude; for every 100 meters you climb the average temperature falls 0.6° C and the range in each region is 200 meters plus. Sleeker and crisper wines originating from the high-altitude sites and fuller-bodied and rounder wines from the lower-lying ones. All the top producers exploit these differences to make a range of dry whites ranging from feather-weights up to powerful and concentrated wines.
In all of these regions grüner veltliner is the most important grape variety, accounting for half to 60% of all plantings, and in each of these regions you find it growing on loess soils. Loess is a yellowish powdery material carried here by the wind during the ice ages and deposited to form a water-retentive and nutrient-rich soil that can be many meters deep. It gives grüner veltliners with a distinctive white pepper note and a bright fruit character – apple and citrus are typical for lighter wines, those from very ripe grapes often having exotic fruit aromas – plus a moderate, but animating acidity. This combination make them very flexible food wines, and young dry grüner veltliners with 12.5% plus alcohol cope with many spicy dishes as well as they match Viennese schnitzel.
In contrast, the steep terraced sites on crystalline bedrock that weathers to a shallow, arid and nutrient-poor soil are challenging places to grow grüner veltliner. However, this soil is ideal for Riesling, as are the stony ancient conglomerate of the great Heiligenstein site in the Kamptal and the younger conglomerate soil in the Traisental. Here the grape develops a peachy aroma, but also notes of fresh herbs, citrus and blossoms. Our high ratings for many wines from those sites, most notably 98 points for the sensational 2016 Heiligenstein Alte Reben Riesling from Bründlmayer in Langenlois, confirm this picture.
Bründlmayer is a well-known name and well-distributed right around Planet Wine. The wines from some of the other producers we rated highly like Nigl in Senftenberg/Kremstal, Hirsch in Kammern/Kamptal, Markus Huber in Nussdorf/Traisental and Ott in Feuersbrunn/Wagram are more difficult to track down in many markets. However, they offer great value for money, particularly if you consider what the dry whites from Burgundy and many high-end chardonnays from New World regions now cost. There never was a better moment for the whites of the Danube. Take our word for it, the 2016s are hot!