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2023 Wachau and Lower Austria: Mercurial Weather Gods Smiled in the End
Austria, featured
, Jul 2024
In 2023, all the signs pointed to a long growing season with a late harvest, but rains after a hot summer with record temperatures sped everything up. These August rains provided some relief from dry stress but also turned into devastating hailstorms in places. Coolish and sunny weather allowed hail-damaged grapes to dry, preventing what could have been a complete rot-fest. In the end, growers could harvest ripe grapes. Overall, Lower Austria and Vienna delivered exquisitely clean wines with vivid fruit expression and welcome crunch and contour. If recent comparisons serve, 2023 tops 2022 but does not quite reach the level of 2021 in all respects – even though some wines get there.
Rosé New Releases: All Over the Map
United States: California, Austria, featured, Spain, Italy, France
, May 2024
Rosé remains in full swing. Ever the popular quaff as the weather warms and the dog days of summer approach, there’s more pink wine on store shelves than ever. However, new releases, mostly from the 2023 vintage, are a bit more variable than usual.
Evoe! German and Austrian Sekt Report
Austria, Germany, featured
, Mar 2024
The landscape of Austrian and German sparkling wine, or Sekt, has changed beyond recognition – at long last. What began with the heroic and often lone efforts of a handful of determined individuals in the 1970s and 1980s is finally in full fizz. It took decades of legal changes and challenges to create this new category, but even more so, it took years of cultural re-assessment to rehabilitate the historical term “Sekt”. Traditional method Sekt is now a serious, exciting and growing category in both countries. The ambition is palpable. This inaugural Sekt report covers bottle-fermented Sekts from Styria to the Weinviertel in Austria and Baden to Saxony in Germany. The revival was slow, but today, you can hear corks popping everywhere.
2022 Burgenland and Austria’s East – A Heaven for Unsung but Compelling Reds
Austria, featured
, Feb 2024
Austria’s central and eastern wine regions produced as much red wine as white. Tasting and thinking about the wines I encountered, it is clearer than ever to me that Blaufränkisch deserves a much wider audience. Moreover, it deserves to be planted far and wide in various corners of the globe. It is one of the last red sleepers out there. My estate visits in November 2023 yielded more tasting notes from the stunning 2021 vintage than from 2022. Because many wineries release wines with delay, this report also includes notes for a sizeable amount of 2020s, 2019s and 2018s – all of them current releases.
2022 Wachau and Lower Austria: An Overshadowed Vintage Worth Exploring
Austria, featured
, Feb 2024
Two thousand twenty-two in Austria is a vintage that had the misfortune of following a stellar year. With the spectacular 2021 vintage still fresh in producers’ memories, nobody was waxing lyrical about 2022. It is one of those years that will live in the shadows and eventually be quietly reassessed, especially since the combination of slightly more moderate alcohol levels, with not-quite-as-much stuffing provides surprising drinking pleasure. But, talking about stuffing, there is plenty of that in the best wines.
A Kaleidoscope of Colors: New Rosé Releases
Austria, featured, Spain, Italy, France
, May 2023
Rosé has never been as exciting as it is today. This year's Rosé coverage takes an in-depth look at the wines of Italy, France, Spain, the United States and Austria. Recent tastings unveil a stunning array of regional styles and flavors. Watch this space as we add more selections from our team of editors in the coming weeks.
Vinous Lockdown Special
Austria, featured, General Interest, France
, Oct 2020
As the reality of a prolonged lockdown started to settle-in this past Spring, I thought it would be fun to do something different, to write an article on regions and estates I don’t usually cover and that have been missing from our pages. I hope you enjoy this tour through some of my favorite properties.
Cellar Favorite: 2006 Weingut F.X. Pichler Riesling Smaragd Unendlich
Austria, Cellar Favorites, cellar favorite
, May 2019
Pichler’s 2006 Riesling Smaragd Unendlich (the name translates to ‘unending’) is one of the most remarkable wines – white or red – I have tasted in a long time.
A Preview of 2018 and 2017 in Germany and Austria
Austria, Germany, featured
, Jan 2019
In canvassing Germany’s precarious vintage 2000 for The International Wine Cellar in early 2002, I led off by observing: “The decade of the 1990s was an extraordinary one for German vintners. At its midpoint (back in Issue 64), I wrote: ‘We are in the midst of a streak of vintages utterly unprecedented in the history of German viticulture.’ And I hadn’t seen or tasted the half of it....!"
Austria’s Riesling & Grüner Veltliner: 2016’s Challenges Met
Austria, featured
, Dec 2018
The tension and excitement (in a single German word, “Spannung”) that attended the 2016 growing season for Austrian Riesling and Grüner Veltliner, as well as the resulting wines, were predictably nowhere more evidenced than in the Wachau and Kamptal. Lovers of Austrian Riesling and Grüner Veltliner are likely to discover much joy in investigating and drinking the finest 2016s.