A few years ago James and I agreed that the number of daring Austrian wines was rather small, and that we wished there were more of them. Now our Austrian Wine of the Year in 2024 is a daring wine that redefines what wines from the gruner veltliner grape can be. And with that a star is born!

Markus Huber of the tiny Traisental appellation within the Danube area of Austria has repeatedly amazed us with his leaps forward in quality over the past few years. However, with the 2023 vintage he hit the bullseye, and his spectacularly expressive and energetic Markus Huber Grüner Veltliner Traisental Berg EL 2023 is our Austrian Wine of the Year. In addition, his Markus Huber Riesling Traisental Berg EL 2023 takes the 12th spot on our Top 100 Wines of Austria list.

Why is Huber’s riesling Ried Berg placed lower than his gruner veltliner Ried Berg although it rated one point higher? Because there is more of the latter, with the annual production ranging between 5,000 and 7,000 bottles from 1.7 hectares of 60-year-old vines.

For the selection of wines for all our Top 100 lists the criteria are quality, price, general availability and what we call the “wow” factor. The brilliance and precision of our Austrian Wine of the Year are as startling as its pink grapefruit aroma!

Daring Austrian wines from the gruner veltliner grape are still rare. That’s a shame, because gruner veltliner tastes so different to chardonnay, pinot gris, pinot grigio, sauvignon blanc, riesling or any of the other white grapes widely grown around the world. Love it or loathe it, nobody forgets their first taste of Austrian gruner.

I think the main reason for a certain conformity in these wines is the fact that gruner veltliner is Austria’s signature grape, accounting for a good third of the total vineyard area. It is therefore more loaded – sometimes maybe overloaded – with expectations.

Let’s face it – one of the reasons gruner veltliner powered the international renaissance of Austrian wines at the beginning of this century is the fact that if you peek at the alcohol content on the label (12.5 percent or less means crisp and light- to medium-bodied; 13 percent or more means more powerful and full-bodied), you have a very good idea of what the wine is going to taste like.

It takes a free-thinker and perfectionist like the 45-year-old Markus Huber, who took over the then tiny family winery in 2000, to make game-changing wines like this. It also takes a special terroir for gruner veltliner to adopt a new guise.

Most of the top gruners in the Danube area grow on fertile loess soil or on sandy-stony gneiss (a granitic rock with a layered structure) soils. In the Traisental, a lime-rich conglomerate is the bedrock, and in the terraced Berg site this has a reddish hue because of the iron it contains.

On top of this, the Traisental is one of the coolest locations in Austria where gruner veltliner is the main grape variety, with the grapes ripening as much as 14 days later than in the warmest sites of the region – a huge difference.

In addition, in 2023 Huber switched to whole-cluster pressing and loading the press by conveyer belt, which means that his grapes are handled very much like they are in Champagne. For us it made a decisive difference.

Although our No. 2 pick is a famous Austrian classic, the F.X. Pichler Riesling Wachau Ried Kellerberg 2023 is also a radical wine. Yes, the wine comes from the same vineyard parcels in this very steep and rocky site, but many consumers and some sommeliers haven’t yet realized that winemaker Lukas Pichler recently made a crucial change in direction.

F.X. Pichler was synonymous with the rich and muscular style of dry gruner veltliner and riesling that brought the Wachau its international breakthrough during the 1990s. The best of these wines were always very well structured. However, starting with the 2020 vintage, Lukas Pichler and his wife, Johanna, switched to picking earlier and to a more moderate alcoholic content. The Ried Kellerberg 2023 has 13 percent alcohol and combines incredible stone fruit intensity with an astonishing freshness and vitality. This new style has also magnified the intensity of the mineral dimension of Pichler’s wines.

How come that this great wine was placed higher than Markus Huber’s masterpiece in our Top 100 World this year? Context! At the top of James’s Top 100 World list were a string of 100- and 99-point wines from around the globe that he had to judge against one another. For this list, the friendly price gave Markus Huber’s wine a push to the very top.

At JamesSuckling.com, our job is not to prefer one particular style of wine, but rather to be impartial on that point (not to mention that wine tastes go in many directions.) The Franz Hirtzberger Riesling Wachau Ried Singerriedel Smaragd 2023 at No. 3 has the fabulous concentration and richness of old-style Wachau wines, but also incredible focus and finesse. And this was exactly the goal of Franz Hirtzberger Jr.

The steady forward march of the red wines from the indigenous blaufrankisch grape has a lot to do with the ease with which it handles the new climatic situation, but also with the remarkable winemakers who dedicated themselves to it. Roland Velich made his first blaufrankisch red wine in the 2001 vintage, and the Moric Blaufränkisch Lutzmannsburg Alte Reben 2022 may be his best to date thanks to its very deep fine tannins. It is our No. 4 Austrian wine.

Another wine that stunned with the coolness of its personality was the No. 5 Prager Riesling Wachau Ried Klaus Smaragd 2023. This is the best wine that Robert Bodenstein has made since taking over the winemaking at Prager from his father, Toni, in 2019. It’s a deep well of geological mystery with incredible precision, and it reminds me a lot of the 1990 vintage with which Toni Bodenstein established his international reputation as a winemaker.

One of the wonderful things about the Wachau is the diversity of wine styles – old, new and unique. It would be hard to find a more powerful and compact Austrian dry white than the Emmerich Knoll Riesling Wachau Vinothekfüllung Samragd 2023. However, the tingling freshness at the finish completes a very exciting package. Fans of this cult producer won’t want to miss our No. 6 wine!

Patrick Proidl of Senftenberg in the Kremstal appellation is a rising Austrian winemaker, and his determination to make wines with great aging potential has resulted in some critics and somms underrating him. The Austrian wine scene has a long tradition of being very impatient for the new vintage! I love the refinement and filigree of the Proidl Riesling Kremstal Ried Hochäcker EL 2023. Those qualities and its underplayed power took it to No. 7 on this list.

Austrian blaufrankisch and red wine would not be where they are today were it not for the work of Uwe Schiefer during the last quarter of a century. His Schiefer Blaufränkisch Burgenland Ried Reihburg Eisenberg an der Pinka 2021 has incredibly plush tannins that give it a beautifully crafted compact core. At No. 8, this is another wine that will benefit from longer aging. If you want to drink it soon, then please decant it.

Scroll down further and you will find an embarrassment of riches in so many different styles. If you want something classic, no problem. And if you want something daring then you’ll also find it. The generally excellent 2023 vintage for dry whites certainly helped, and both 2021 and 2022 produced many excellent reds. It’s time to enjoy.

– Stuart Pigott, Senior Editor

Note: The list of wines below is comprised of bottles tasted and rated in 2024 by the tasters at JamesSuckling.com. You can sort the wines by vintage, score and alphabetically by winery name. You can also search for specific wines in the search bar.