Top 100 Wines of Austria 2019
Executive Editor Nick Stock and Contributing Editor Jack Suckling tasted more than 550 Austrian wines this year, featuring the nation’s best producers. The 2018 harvest in Austria was extremely hot and dry and saw some of the earliest harvesting in living memory for many producers. Some clearly struggled to manage the unfamiliar conditions in the vineyard. But 2018 still delivered many excellent wines.
This was a year in which quality could not be saved in the winery, it had to be delivered in the field. And, as is often the case, the top wineries found ways to fine-tune their work in the vineyard, harvest quality grapes with discipline and precision and create well-structured wines.
And so this year’s top 100 list of Austrian wines is a familiar collection of the nation’s most revered winemakers and vineyards. These are the most accomplished, hardest-working and most quality focused winemakers and those that are fortunate enough to farm the best vineyard sites. They may have been tested in 2018 but they rose to the top.
Read more: Austria 2019 tasting report – 550 wines rated
Riesling outshone its counterparts even more than usual, a testament to the resilience of the variety as well as the fact that it occupies much of the most sought after locations. Our top eight Austrian wines of 2019 are all riesling.
Our No. 1 wine was the Emmerich Knoll Riesling Wachau Ried berg Smaragd 2018, a wonderfully pure riesling that was fresh and lively and so refined. In second place was another exceptional white: F.X. Pichler Riesling Wachau Ried Loibenberg Smaragd 2018 that showed intense purity and power.
No. 3 another super Emmerich Knoll offering, the Riesling Wachau Ried Schütt Smaragd 2018 with succulent grassy and spicy notes while our fourth-placed wine, F.X. Pichler’s Riesling Wachau Ried Kellerberg Smaragd 2018, is complex and elegant, and impressive in every respect.
The above wines all scored 97 points and were our best rated wines from Austria this year from two of the Wachau’s most revered producers.
We hope you enjoy our list of the Top 100 Austrian Wines that we tasted this year. With the challenges of the heat and weather it seems the most experienced wineries were best placed to create great wines from the 2018 harvest.
Do let us know in the comments if you have your own favorites, and we will try to taste them next year!
Read more: Top 100 Wines of Austria 2018