Wachau Spring Wine Festival (Wachauer Weinfrühling)

The Wachau
Tasted Saturday, May 4, 2013 by wineamateur with 1,229 views

Introduction

Notes from the Wachau Spring Wine Festival, 4th May 2013.

It's about an hour on the train from Vienna to Krems, and then a very attractive cycle ride upstream along the left bank of the Danube that soon brings one into the glorious Wachau, with its amazing terraced vineyards, apricot orchards and historic medieval towns and villages. We were soon in the two Loibens, Unter and Oben; just outside the latter, we made our first stop - in FX Pichler's funky grey cuboid winery, the letters F and X embossed in the top corner of the wall. Then on to lunch at Jamek, taking advantage of its unusually being open at the weekend, before cycling upstream past Dürnstein (of Richard the Lionheart fame) and heading straight to Spitz, at the end of the major vineyard section, where we stopped at Hirtzberger on the way into town - very much a happening locale, attracting a crowd of Trachten-clad Austrians, many of whom I suspect were down from Vienna for the day.

From Hirtzberger, we turned back on ourselves, and cycled back to Rudi Pichler's modern new winery on the edges of Wösendorf, just in front of the hillside Kollmütz vineyard. Then it was on to Prager's splendid Danube-facing villa in Weissenkirchen, before our last stop of the day in Unterloiben, where we tasted at Knoll and their next-door neighbour Alzinger.

Most properties were showing only their 2012s, but FX Pichler had a mix of 12s and 11s.

Flight 1 - Weingut FX Pichler (6 Notes)

Flight 2 - Weingut Josef Jamek (12 Notes)

Flight 3 - Weingut Franz Hirtzberger (8 Notes)

Flight 4 - Weingut Rudi Pichler (10 Notes)

Flight 5 - Weingut Prager (6 Notes)

Flight 6 - Weingut Knoll (10 Notes)

Flight 7 - Alzinger (5 Notes)

Closing

After a wonderful day's tasting, a few concluding reflections are in order.

1. The 2012 Vintage. This has been heralded across Austria as a top vintage of ripe, powerful and structured wines, both red and white. The Wachau largely escaped the late frosts that severely reduced production elsewhere in the country. According to Franz Hirtzberger, as quoted on the Falstaff website, 2012 is 'a very good year - in quantity terms too. Fully ripe grapes brought powerful wines with harmonious acidity.' For Leo Alzinger, '[t]he wines are concentrated, very juicy and extremely well balanced.' These reports were fully borne out by the samples we tasted. It was particularly interesting to taste the 12s and 11s side-by-side at FX Pichler, the only place we tried that did this - though not the same wines from the two vintages. So far as one could tell from the small selection, the 11s there were more mineral in character, and in a more austere style; the 12s riper and with rounder fruit (but not lacking minerality or structure either). 11 was thought especially good for Riesling, 12 equally good for Riesling and GV.

2. My own preference at most places we tasted was for the GVs, which - to my palate - tended to be rounder, riper, fresher and more approachable than the Rieslings; and more powerful too (as Leo Alzinger was also quoted as saying). To be sure, there were some very fine Rieslings indeed, especially from the big names, but some wines from which I was hoping for a bit more came across as a little surly. Perhaps just going through an awkward phase?

3. Talking of the big names, the tasting also confirmed - at least on the day - the established hierarchy in the region, with the "big four" of Hirtzberger, Knoll, FX Pichler and Prager having the most impressive ranges all round, and the most splendid peaks. On purely economic grounds, I had been hoping that the producers from the next rung below would be every bit the match for their more celebrated neighbours, but, though there were some very fine wines from Alzinger, Jamek and Rudi Pichler, I didn't find quite the same level of across-the-board quality. That said, these wines are also a good bit cheaper than the big four's, and there's excellent value to be found amongst them.

4. One final observation. It's easy when tasting these wines to be so seduced by the magnificent Smaragds that one doesn't pay sufficient attention to the lighter wines at Steinfeder and Federspiel level. That would be a mistake. On the day, I was particularly impressed by some wonderful Federspiels - racy, taut, elegant; definitely serious wines - which demand respect on their own terms, and certainly not as an inferior alternative to the Smaragd wines.

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