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Austria Visit March 2010
We had regular reports of the 2009 harvest as it happened, and the general feeling was that for reds, without question it is a fabulous harvest. For whites there are exceptional wines too, though September rain brought the challenge of rot, especially in the Wachau. Careful selection further reduced the size of the harvest on top of what was already a small crop after poor fruit set at flowering.
This must mean that there is some poor stuff around in some cellars, but my experience with our producers was great. The wines are rich and ripe. Acidity seems good, and the wines have a very abundant charm which will make them very appealing in youth.
I missed a warm week the week before, but during the whole of my visit we were back to winter with a vengeance. Cold wind, snow in Wachau. Just bitter, bitter conditions!
Helmut Lang
A quick tour of Helmut's freezing cold cellar straight after breakfast. A glamorous life. After every taste, the glass rinsed by high pressure hose, making cold hands even colder. My notes in book virtually illegible due to the shivering conditions! But: Gruner Eiswein 2008 is a pretty, simple wine. Pale in colour, pure with no hint of botrytis. The big wines of the tasting were without doubt the Gelber Muskateller Eiswein 2008, which is almost ready for bottling. Beautiful fresh young green, big young nose, obvious Muscat, and a clean, pure but thick palate. And just as good was the 2005 Samlin g88 Eiswein: monster wine with 300g sugar and masses of acidity behind.
Pittnauer
Wine and music seems to be a regular theme of our recent blogs. Gerhard always puts on a CD while we taste. The Ry Cooder And Manuel Galban's Mambo Sinuendo accompanied his 2009s. I also learned that the tune I know of as Van Lose Stairway is in fact Mercy Mercy Mercy originally by Joe Zawinul . We tasted seriously too, I promise, but this was a lovely way to ease myself into a trip which accelerated rapidly from this relaxed, laid back start. Highlights were the Blaufrankisch 2009 (no longer called "klassik"), the three St Laurent single vineyard wines, especially the Alte Reben.
Prieler
This inspiring family were Winemaker of the year in 2009, as chosen by Falstaff magazine. Isabelle and I were unable to attend the party last summer, so sent them a couple of smart bottles of Burgundy by way of congratulations. When Silvia told me how much she had enjoyed the Fourrier Clos St Jacques, I asked "and the Cathiard?" I watched in amusement as Silvia turned, somewhat puzzled, to her brother Georg; "What second bottle?" Under close examination, it transpired that when he opened my parcel he had handed her the Fourrier bottle, but kept the Cathiard Reignots for himself.
Good wines here too, and a trip up the Schutzner Stein where all their vineyards are located. As beautiful under a light dusting of late winter snow as in the blistering heat of summer. A nature reserve and a truly lovely place. Pinot Blanc is brilliant in 2009. Rich and aromatic, but so lively and fresh. Sadly short on quantity. Goldberg 2006 looks great, and a few cask samples of the 2009 Blaufrankisch wines look brilliant. Johanneshohe 2008 continues its progress towards something less chewy than in the past, and a little more supple. The big leap forwards thugh, as noted by some at the February tasting, is with the Leitheberg Blaufrankisch. Cool, creamy, classy. Not cheap, but a great alternative to Goldberg in these hard times.
Kurt Feiler
Kurt's range is always large, and we trimmed it with an eye on the clock. 2009 is not a great abundant vintage for sweet wines, with only one Ausbruch from Gelber Muskateller but the BA in 2008 and 2009 are if anything, better for this. Umriss Blaufrankisch 2008 has just been bottled. Less new oak, and larger barrels are used these days which seems to make for a cleaner, fresher nose and attack. 2008 was a notoriously difficult vintage for those in biodynamic conversion, as Kurt is, but the reds look pure, ripe and charming. Solitaire 2008 will be a smashing wine when we get hold of it this summer.
Roland Velich - MORIC
We spent a long evening together, and looked at 2008, then 2007, then some 2009 samples. We also tasted Roalnd's brother Heinz's wines from the family estate - Weingut Velich - which formed part of our very first shipment 12 years ago . Heinz uses less new oak these days than in the past, but the two chardonnays - Darscho and Tiglat - are as good as ever, and with no importer these days, I have to confess to being tempted....Top class Chardonnay anybody?
2008 was a very small, difficult vintage, but the wines are marvellous. The wines are a little more spiky at this stage than the 2007s but there is a great perfume, and the wines have great energy.
Roland also makes two GVs from the chalky soils around St Georgen, just north of Rust. I struggle with these wines, but have to concede that they seem to age well, and the 2007 we drank at the end of the evening was a seriously good wine, and utterly different from anything in Lower Austria.
2009s are going through malolactic fermantation at present, so are mostly tricky to taste. But we'll see these again a little later in the year. We're utterly confident that Roland's early excitement will be well justified.
We finished the evening with an impressively youthful 2002 Neckenmarkt Alte Reben: lively, young looking, fresh. This has a long life ahead, as I'm sure do all the Moric wines.
There will be a couple of new wines later in the year.
Umathum
Josef is on good form, and pleased that after a slow start, we seem to have bought, and sold a lot more wine over the past 12 months. Sweet wine makes up a large proportion of our business together, but the TBA Scheurebe 2007, in particular, is a marvellous TBA, and has been ideal for several of our smart on-trade accounts. We had a catch up on all the range. By virtue of having been well-established before "anti freeze " struck in 1985, he is considered something of an elder statesman in Austrian red wine. Umathum is our only source of Zweigelt, and the 2008, and the 2009 are fruitier versions than we have seen in the past. There have sometimes been questions of reduction in the wine when first opened, but now that the estate has moved entirely to Vinolok, a little extra oxygen during maturation seems to have solved this problem. Hallebuhl in 2006 is a marvellous expression of Zweigelt. We have bought a little of this in previous years, and will have this later in the year. I'm tempted to say that for Zweigelt, Umathum's Hallebuhl is the exception that proves the rule.
Stadt Krems
Goosey (or Franz-Josef Gansberger if you prefer) showed us the delicious 2009s. 15% was lost at flowering and another 15% from the rain at the beginning of harvest, so this is a very small year. We're very grateful that prices have been held this year, and the wines are really impressive. This estate has come a long way since Fritz arrived in summer 2003. There is a new cellar, a new joint venture with the Benedictine monks from Stift Goettweig over the river, and a large replanting programme. Gruner Veltliner Weinzierlberg has been a real success story of the past year for us, and as a premium, but not so expensive Gruner it has worked very well for several customers, on and off trade. 2009 is a real delight. It is a little more opulent and aromatically fruity than 2008, but still clearly shows its schist terroir. This will be over in the next 6 - 8 weeks. For Rieslings, Kogl is as good as the 2007.
Hirtzberger
They had a torrid time at harvest, as a result of the rain, which came on the 16th September, and lasted for the best part of two weeks. The three contiguous regions: Wachau, Kremstal and Kamptal are in total only about 50km long. But rain, when it comes, always hits Wachau hardest. Franz was remembering the fantastic state of the vineyards during the first week in September, where everything looked perfect (Just at the time we made our visit with the Oxford Wine Stewards). The rain created a lot of extra work, obviously, and both Hirtzberger and Rainer Wess talked about a nightmarishly difficult harvest. I suppose one can but wonder if things would have been dramatically better had this September rain never materialised, but the results, frankly , are still exceptional, and I remembered the feeling of pure hedonism I experienced when I first tasted the 2007s, especially Hochrain Riesling. Rain did require serious elimination of damaged fruit, and, again, quantities are dramatically down on 2008, itself a small harvest. Prices will be up a little, but there is a new GV vineyard, Kirchweg, near the river just north of Spitz. Part of this is a young vineyard they planted a few years back, part is a vineyard with some 25 year old vines they bought last year. This is a slightly simpler, leaner Smaragd than Axpoint, but will offer a slightly les expensive alternative.
Rainer Wess
Rainer is bursting out of his small winery in Unterloiben. He is now vinifying from 7.5 ha and is desperately short of space. He showed the architect's plans for the new place he has bought just on the outskirts of Krems where work is due to begin in May, and to be ready for the harvest by the end of September. There is no Achleiten this year. His grape supplier's attempts to farm biodynamically in 2009 led to some disastrous consequences with the rain, and Rainer is not optimistic that this new philosophy will be able to supply him fruit of the quality he needs. So the range is back to Pfaffenberg and Loibenberg for the single vineyards. We have noticed that Rainer's wines are quite backward when tasted in February / March. He generally delays the bottling of the single vineyard wines until early summer, in most years, which really benefits these slow, serious wines. As usual, not a hint of botrytis in any of the wines; it is meticulously picked out.
Felsner
Kremstal is the warmest of the three regions of Lower Austria, and usually the earliest to harvest. This, coupled with the rain of September, I suppose, has created some plumper wines at Felsner, though Manfred does not consider that they had any particular problems with rot this year. The freshness from their cooler vineyards is therefore extremely valuable as a blending component in the simpler wines, while the Alte Reben vineyards somehow manages to retain its own acidity balance along with the ripeness and complexity. Gerlissen is a really full mouthful , and will carry on the good progress we made with this with the 2008 vintage. We're working on a new project and label with Manfred and Renate this year, and hope to have this available as mid-priced wine in early summer. The Riesling is another wine we will buy again this year with great confidence. It has that peachy, aromatic quality I remember enjoying so much with the 2004. Like the 204 it has 7g/l of residual sugar. I've always had a soft spot for this kind of balance of Riesling, it seems to lift the fruit, and the aromatics. The wine is still essentially dry, but the charm and approachability of the wine makes this a very moreish flavour. We will repeat too last year's experiment with the rose - a Zweigelt /St Laurent blend which has a great intensity of red fruit, despite its pale colour.
Gobelsburg
I've sat in the same chair now to taste 13 vintages with Michael. I still sense that 2005 was the vintage I've enjoyed the most from Gobelsburg, but 2009 is another very fine selection, and in many ways the vintages are similar. This is a brilliantly successful operation, and we had a tour of the new presshouse which went up in time for the 2009 vintage. There is a basket press, used for reds, obviously, but also for the Tradition wines, and some spanking new, gleaming stainless steel presses and tanks. The volume produced at Gobelsburg has increased significantly since Michael took over in 1996, not only with the bought-in fruit for the Domane Gobelsburg wines, but also with parcels of vineyards purchased during this time. The whole range is as good as ever. In this vintage where some might question whether acidity levels are high enough for the classic Austrian styles, there is a real vivacity and mineral freshness to the whole range. The copious rainfalls throughout the summer prevented any dry stress, and this, Michael suggests, has perhaps reduced any herbal notes. Overall the wines - at the upper end of the range - have all the ripeness, richness of texture which is such a strong Gobelsburg hallmark, but there is a powerful fresh firm edge to them too. Everything is good or very good, but I think I gave my top marks to the Gaisberg Riesling 2009, and the Riesling Tradition 2008. We'll see a little of both of these over the summer.