Austria’s Fresh and Flinty 2020 Vintage Rises to the Challenge

The 2020 growing season in Austria was an abrupt break from the trio of warm and dry years that brought drought stress to many vineyards and in 2017 and 2018 pushed the Alpine republic’s signature gruner veltliner grape right to the limit of its heat resistance in some warm sites.

Although 2020 also started with a drought, delaying the bud break of vines, June brought rain and gray skies, becoming frequent parts of a weather pattern that felt like a throwback to the situation a generation ago. The question was whether the leading producers could rise to this unexpected challenge. From the 776 wines we tasted for this report, the answer is they mostly did.

As a result of the precipitation, green was everywhere when I visited Austria twice during the fall of 2020, making it seem like a garden of fertility next to its neighbor Germany, which was parched and brown while suffering through the worst drought in living memory. According to Leo Alzinger of the Alzinger winery in Loiben/Wachau, the grapes were looking good in the middle of August until a sudden hailstorm on Aug. 22.

“Because the grapes were already soft, that created conditions for rot to develop,” he said. “The rainy harvest was a challenge because it also resulted in rot. We therefore did a pre-harvest of all our vineyards to remove rotten grapes. Later the weather improved and excellent quality was possible, although the hail cost us 10 percent to 15 percent of the crop.”

READ MORE: TOP 100 WINES OF AUSTRIA 2020

For other top producers in the Wachau, the losses from that hailstorm were much worse. Franz Hirtzberger Jr., of the eponymous winery in Spitz/Wachau, summarized the grim results for his family. “Eighty percent of our vineyards were in the center of the storm,” he said. “We lost 70 percent of our entire crop, and production of our riesling smaragd from the Singerriedel site was down 85 percent, and we produced no gruner veltliner smaragd from the Honivogl site.” (Smaragd is the top category of ripeness classification for white wines in the Wachau.)

We were most amazed by how well Hirtzberger’s 2020 wines showed, given the hammer blow of late hail. His Riesling Wachau Singerriedel Smaragd 2020 was one of the stars of the vintage and proof that even the greatest adversity could be mastered.

Austria’s wine producers also needed to be right on top of downy mildew even before the vines bloomed in late June 2020. If not, the vines’ canopy was damaged, reducing the solar panel-like effect the foliage provides the grape and resulting in lost crop. Later, when the grapes softened and began ripening, they became susceptible to botrytis. Under ideal conditions this fungus results in noble rot, but under conditions like those of the 2020 harvest in Austria it turned some grapes into a mushy mass lacking attractive aromas.

Despite the challenges faced by producers, we found a number of them that made remarkably exciting ranges of dry whites in 2020. At the top of this list are Leo Alzinger, F.X. Pichler and Rudi Pichler in the Wachau, Nigl in the Kremstal, and Huber and Neumayer in the tiny, underrated Traisental. There were some standout single-vineyard dry rieslings from many other producers, this grape clearly having coped with the rainy fall better than gruner veltliner.

RESISTANT RIESLING

The interesting thing about this situation is how riesling also coped with the heat and drought of the 2017 and 2018 vintages much better than gruner veltliner did. Plantings of riesling in Austria are concentrated in the top vineyard sites of the Danube region, which comprises many appellations, most notably the Wachau, Kremstal and Kamptal. Given that riesling now has the proven ability to thrive in both cool, damp years and as well as the warm dry ones than gruner veltliner, we expect a mini boom in riesling plantings during the next five or 10 years.

Why does riesling cope so well with these contrasting problems? Because it is late ripening in cool, damp years, and the grapes are less soft than the gruner veltliner grapes when the first harvest rain arrives, leaving them less susceptible to rot. In the warm, dry years riesling is more resilient to drought stress than gruner veltliner, which needs more water and nutrients than riesling, thanks to its vigorous nature. On top of this, riesling is a tough bird thanks to the genes it derived from the ancient heunisch, or gouais blanc, grape variety – one of its parents.

Steiermark, the green and hilly region on the border with Slovenia, which is best known for sauvignon blanc and chardonnay, also produced some standout dry whites, and we can recommend trying the wines of Lackner-Tinnacher, Polz, Tement and Wohlmuth. The Steiermark is clearly on a roll, since it switched from imitating other regions and began making wines with striking or unique personalities.

After being impressed by many of the 2018 reds, most important those from the indigenous blaufrankisch grape, it was exciting to find that 2019 often topped them. It is surely the best modern red wine vintage in Austria, thanks to the fine tannins and excellent balance. Look out for the stunning wines from Moric.

Burgenland remains the star red wine region of Austria, but we were also very impressed by a number of wines from the small Carnuntum region, most notably the not yet released single-vineyard blaufrankisch from Dorli Muhr.

Finally, the opening of the extraordinary new cellar of the Schloss Gobelsburg winery in the Kamptal region that we attended must be mentioned. We were stunned by the underground cloister with a glass roof, which owner and winemaker Michael Moosbrugger constructed.

The granite columns of this unique piece of winery line up with his stated aim of “building something that would last at least 500 years.”

Where else on Planet Wine do you encounter vision of this kind?

– Stuart Pigott, Senior Editor

The list of wines below is comprised of bottles tasted and rated for this report by the tasters at JamesSuckling.com. They include many of the latest releases not yet available on the market, but which will be available soon. 

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