Wine and Food Diary of Giles MacDonogh

Austrian Wines

Written by Giles MacDonogh

Austrian Wines

Posted: 2nd July 2018

It has been a while since I have been in Vienna for the biennial Vievinum wine fair and a lot of things have changed in Austria. New appellations have emerged, but there is more and more spin-marketing and attempts to brand the unbrandable; also the approaches to certain grape varieties has altered, and not always for the best. Without a definite programme, I decided the most useful approach was to dip in among the very many growers I have known these past twenty-seven years, and see where they were now. In several cases the fresh, young grower of the early nineties has transmogrified into a stouter, greyer figure, cut more in the image of myself; in others the father has passed on the reins to a son or daughter and now confines himself to the day-to-day work in the vines, or has possibly taken a suitcase of cash and headed for the hills or the Riviera!

One estate where the son has been in charge for several years now, is Austria’s most famous: F X Pichler in Loiben in the Wachau. Now visitors to the fair must try to distract Lukas Pichler’s attention to taste the wines. They are famously hard to assess in their youth. None of the 2017 wines was ready. Some were brimming with CO2, the others largely inchoate. At the top end the Kellerberg Grüner Veltliner Smaragd was showing signs of life, and the Riesling Steinertal was an absolute delight. The Loibenberg was less easy to judge, but then came ‘Unendlich’ (Infinite) and the Riesling from the Kellerberg and finally Grüner Veltliner ‘M’ which was suitably massive. Time will tell, but if their track record is anything to go by, they will surely be magnificent.

The 2017s from the Wachau failed to impress me as much as they have in some years. The younger Emmerich Knoll’s wines (the new generation has also been in the hot seat for some years) seemed a little less sensational than they were but I loved the Riesling Smaragd from Ried Schütt. Franz Hirtzberger is a reference for Grüner Veltliner. The Axpoint Smaragd had varietal character at least but the benchmark Honivogl was slighter than I recalled. There was a gorgeous 2017 Riesling Smaragd from Ried Setzen, however. This new ephemerality seems to have affected Prager too, whose wines were formerly colossal and now seem but a shadow of their former selves. Is the model for these lighter wines Germany?

 

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Giles MacDonogh

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