Austria’s wine scene continues to evolve beyond its iconic rieslings and gruner veltliners, particularly with its very best bottles. International whites like chardonnays and sauvignon blancs, alongside reds, are now reaching the highest levels of quality.

This was evident in our recent annual report on the country, when we gave a perfect score to a blaufrankisch wine from the Moric winery and very high ratings to a number of chardonnays and sauvignon blancs.

This year we rated almost 1,500 Austrian wines during our trip to the Danube region in September and in our Hong Kong tasting office. Senior Editor Stuart Pigott and I attended the annual Single Vineyard Summit tasting while in Austria and separately visited producers in the southern Burgenland and Steiermark regions, where we were impressed with the quality of reds from Austria’s indigenous blaufrankisch grape as well as from its riot of white varieties.

Take the case of this year’s Austrian Wine of the Year, the Kollwentz Chardonnay Burgenland Gloria 2023. This silky, complex white combines flint and grilled-baguette aromas with a mineral, chalky freshness that doesn’t seem to stop. While the warm, continental Burgenland region is planted to more red varieties than white, chardonnay ripens slowly in Kollwentz’s Gloria vineyard – a cool, windy and historic site in the north of Burgenland, surrounded by forest at over 300 meters above sea level. Winemaker Andi Kollwentz kept it on the full lees in French oak barrels for a year, resulting in restrained richness.

Past vintages of Gloria have consistently placed among our Top 10 Austrian wines over the past few years, and the 2023 iteration is the best yet at 99 points. Kollwentz said that “2023 was a dream year, particularly for chardonnay.” In fact, the 2023 growing season in Burgenland was excellent for both reds and whites, escaping much of the late-summer hailstorms and rains that the Danube region experienced.

The greatness that Kollwentz’s chardonnays achieve underline Austria’s growing diversity in top-tier whites. Out of the four chardonnays that made our Top 100 Wines of Austria list, the Gloria struck us with the “wow” factor that we look for in great wines. It also retails at an accessible price of under $80 in Europe and less than $100 in the United States, according to Wine-Searcher, the international wine sales platform.

Kollwentz made close to 14,000 bottles of the 2023 Gloria and it’s widely available, which is another reason it’s our top Austrian wine this year. Many other outstanding Austrian wines, particularly single-vineyard expressions, are produced in far smaller quantities – often just a few hundred bottles – making them almost impossible to find on the market, which is why they didn't qualify here.

Price, quality and the “wow factor” – the emotional impact of an exceptional wine – determined our ranking of the wines below. We tried to keep prices below $150, with only a handful of wines above $100. The $300 Unendlich wines (both riesling and gruner veltliner) from F.X. Pichler, however, didn't make the cut.

We also factored in global availability and production quantity, selecting wines that have a minimum production of 3,000 bottles with limited exceptions. In addition, each producer was only allowed two wines on this list. Above all, though, our Top 100 Austria list emphasizes wines of great value and accessibility.

Our No. 2 wine leads the charge of 55 wines on this list from Austria’s northerly Danube region. Superlight and concentrated at the same time, with an almost endless finish, the Markus Huber Grüner Veltliner Traisental Berg EL 2024 is produced from biodynamically and meticulously farmed 60-year-old vines in the Traisental wine region. Like our No. 1 wine, its quality-to-price ratio is outstanding – it can be found for under $50. The 2023 iteration of the Berg EL took our top spot among Austrian wines last year.

Winemaker Markus Huber said that while 2024 was a challenging vintage, “everything was clean” – meaning no rot was present – “and we did whole-cluster pressing for almost everything.”

It’s worth noting that 2024 was a very warm year until the rains in September provided some relief, although they also complicated the harvest with waterlogged vineyards and disease pressure. But in the Traisental, one of the coolest areas where gruner veltliner is grown in the Danube region, Huber achieved perfection.

The Steiermark region, which typically releases its wines a year later than the Danube, delivered some fantastic wines from the 2023 vintage. The Wohlmuth Sauvignon Blanc Südsteiermark Ried Edelschuh GSTK 2023 is the highest-ranked of the 19 Steiermark wines on this list, coming in at No. 3. It showcases lightweight power from old vines – at the same time delicate, mouth-wateringly fresh and spicy alongside fantastic wild herb, lemongrass, licorice and citrus aromas.

Gerhard Wohlmuth, the owner and winemaker of the eponymous winery, said his aim in crafting a wine is to “search for uniqueness and the feeling of the vineyard” – and not necessarily to achieve perfection. His wines, hailing from the windy, cool, high-altitude Sausal area of the Sudsteiermark, may be atypical, but they certainly leave a lasting impression.

We at JamesSuckling.com search for uniqueness alongside greatness, and we found it in one wine outside Austria’s DAC system (the equivalent of France’s AOC system or Italy’s DOC) that we ranked among out Top 10.

The No. 4 Sommer Riesling Austria Handwerk 2023, which is simply classified as a Wein aus Osterreich – “wine from Austria” – hails from the Leithaberg area and is made from organically grown grapes. It’s a dry, flinty, citrusy and dynamic riesling that turns deeply stony and earthy, and it deeply impressed Stuart when he tasted it. We also love that it can be found at a price slightly above $30.

That same uniqueness comes shining through in the 100-point Moric blaufrankisch beauty, the Alte Reben 2023 (No. 7), which is a spectacularly concentrated, fresh and mineral. The Alte Reben (meaning “old vines”) is made from a blend of several parcels of vines that are all more than 80 years old – some reaching 120. And it is produced in excellent quantities compared with Moric’s single-vineyard reds, although at an average price of about $140, it’s one of the pricier wines on this list.

As for the renowned Wachau region, four wines in our Top 10 (and 20 in the Top 100) show that its fame continues to be well-deserved. From one of the most esteemed wineries in Austria, the Emmerich Knoll Riesling Wachau Ried Schütt Smaragd 2024 (No. 5) is exceptionally polished for the 2024 vintage, showing complex and ripe fruit aromas with great weight.

It’s followed by the No. 6 Alzinger Riesling Wachau Ried Loibenberg Smaragd 2024, which comes from a very cold, higher-altitude parcel, surrounded by forest. This is a peachy, citrusy and spicy white that has plenty of elegance and purity but shows none of the heaviness that can come with wines of the Smaragd classification. We also like that it sells for around $40.

At No. 8 is the third perfect-scoring wine among the Top 10. The Franz Hirtzberger Riesling Wachau Ried Singerriedel Smaragd 2024 is a complex, racy and endlessly mineral white, brimming with peach-tea, lemon and wet-stone aromas. It’s from a steep site that has an altitude difference of 150 meters from top to bottom, which winemaker Franz Hirtzberger Jr. said contributed to the wine’s complexity. For a single-vineyard wine it has a prodigious production level, at 12,000 bottles. But it’s also of the higher-priced wines on this list, at around 100 euros in Austria, or an average of almost $140 worldwide.

The fourth Wachau wine in the top 10 is the Rudi Pichler Riesling Wachau Ried Achleithen Smaragd 2024 (No.10). It’s a silky and creamy expression of riesling, with a very cool and unique nose of tarragon and herbs. It comes from an extreme, terraced and rocky site.

Finally, our fifth riesling among the top 10, the No. 9 Hirsch Riesling Kamptal Ried Gaisberg EL 2024, is a mineral, highly structured, compact yet medium-bodied wine made from biodynamically grown grapes in the Kamptal area to the east of Wachau.

Read the full list below to find both classic showstoppers and more distinctive wines. Riesling leads the way with 38 wines, followed by gruner veltliner, sauvignon blanc and blaufrankisch, with a smattering of high-quality chardonnay and weissburgunder (pinot blanc). For a varietal smack in the cheek and taste buds, try a roter veltliner at No. 54, a rotgipfler at No. 81 and sweet wines of various kinds – from gelber muskateller (No. 37) to rosenmuskateller (No. 63).

It's never been a better time to drink the best wines of Austria, or to take a chance on the country’s wondrous variety.

– Claire Nesbitt, Staff Writer & Critic

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

Note: You can sort the wines below by vintage, score and alphabetically by winery name. You can also search for specific wines in the search bar.