The Wines of the Wachau

 

        Robert Bodenstein wants to visit Wrexham. I could hardly believe my ears when I heard this. Here I was in Weissenkirchen, a village in the beautiful Austrian region of Wachau, and a winemaker wanted to see Wrexham. He had opened a special bottle, so I felt I owed him some candour. As a native of the U.K., I said do not go.

I wasn’t in the Wachau to chat about Welcome to Wrexham, of course, but to see Achleiten, a famous vineyard. My enthusiasm stemmed from a masterclass I attended last year in which the presenter remarked that Rieslings from Achleiten could last forty or fifty years. Then I saw a picture of the place: beneath a forest, green rows of vines spread across a long slope and downhill all the way to the Danube. What a sight this was!

        Robert Bodenstein works at Weingut Prager. The winery is on the main road which passes through Weissenkirchen and along the Danube. Being so close to the river, it is protected by a flood wall. This proved to be a blessing in September 2024 when torrential rain hit the Wachau for four days, destroying the cellars at some other estates.

        

I tasted a number of wines from Achleiten at Weingut Prager, all of which were classified as ‘Smaragd’. Such wines are from the Wachau’s top vineyards, must have an abv of at least 12.5% and are the best the region has to offer. Robert Bodenstein told me that he could tell immediately if a wine was from Achleiten. It ‘obviously has this smokiness to it,’ he said.

Prager’s Riesling Smaragd Achleiten 2024 had the Wachau’s characteristic apricot flavour. It also had a shocking amount of acidity – ‘off the scale’, to use my tasting note. Sampling a Grüner Veltliner Smaragd from the same vintage and vineyard was fascinating, for it showed the stark difference in acidity between the two grapes. I also experienced just how good an aged Grüner Veltliner can be when we had a Smaragd from Achleiten from 2011.

Apparently, it wasn’t even a particularly great year. 2021 was ‘the most beautiful vintage this century’, 2014 was ‘horrible’ and 2013 was ‘really beautiful’, but Robert Bodenstein had to consult his phone about 2011.

I wrote at the time that the wine had an ‘amazing nose’, which I felt incapable of describing, so I asked Robert Bodenstein for his opinion. Honeysuckle and chamomile, he suggested. On the palate, the trademark Achleiten smoky note came in after a while. The mouthfeel was soft initially, but then the acidity crept in, lingering on the front of my tongue. As for the finish, it seemed never-ending. It was the best Grüner Veltliner I’ve ever had.

They make another Grüner Veltliner Smaragd from Achleiten called ‘Stockkultur’ at Weingut Prager, which means ‘pole culture’ in English. All the vines are trained on poles, rather like the stakes used in Côte-Rôtie. This part of Achleiten is by the woods and above the fog line. The oldest vines were planted in the 1930s. The wine was even more acidic than its counterpart made from grapes further down the slope.

Five minutes along the road is Dürnstein, where the arid slopes behind Domäne Wachau feature the stone walls for which the Wachau is famous. Rows of vines are planted on the terraces atop the walls. I was told at Weingut Prager that thirty to forty sections in their vineyards were damaged in the Biblical rains of September 2024.

As the biggest name in the area, Domäne Wachau of course makes wines from Achleiten. I tried two young Grüner Veltliners, both classified Smaragd, but from different vineyards: one from Achleiten, the other from Kirnberg, a vineyard on the opposite side of the Danube. The one from Achleiten, I wrote, was ‘smoky and mineral’, with much higher acidity than the one from Kirnberg. I also tasted two Rieslings: one from Achleiten, the other from Singerriedel, a vineyard in Spitz, at the western end of the Wachau. Remarkably, the harvest in Spitz occurs two weeks after the grapes are picked in Dürnstein, despite the negligible distance between the two villages. I wrote that both Rieslings were ‘super dry.’

I didn’t get to see Achleiten, sadly, as I simply ran out of time. When I got back to the U.K., I went to Majestic Wine and cleaned them out of Domäne Wachau’s Grüner Veltliner Smaragd Achleiten 2021. If a branch near you still has some stock, I suggest you do the same.

 

The Wines of Washington State

   

          My American stepfather is ninety-three years old. Not surprisingly, he says he has ‘done a lot’ in his lifetime. This includes visiting forty six of the fifty states in the U.S.A., the exceptions being North Dakota (‘boring’), Colorado, and the two states in the Pacific Northwest, Oregon and Washington (‘no reason to go’).

 

          Needless to say, he’s not a wine drinker. Indeed, before I brought up the topic he had no idea that Oregon and Washington even had vineyards. As someone who avoids Pinot Noir, I share his lack of excitement about Oregon. Washington, though, is another matter, which explains why I travelled several hundred miles to attend a tasting in London.

 

          I warmed up for my journey south by drinking several bottles from this unheralded part of America, which I obtained in the Great Wine Co.’s stellar January sale. One was the 2018 Eroica XLC Dry Riesling from Chateau Ste. Michelle, Washington’s leading producer.

 

      The lack of familiarity with Washington hit home when a colleague asked if I knew they grew Riesling there before my purchase. (Yes, I did.) Anyway, the wine was off-dry with a lovely honeyed flavour, an endless finish, and the grape’s trademark crazy acidity.

 

          The vineyards in Washington are planted on a huge swathe of parched land in the east of the state. Rainfall is so low that irrigation from the broad Columbia River is essential. It’s very continental: hot (100 degrees fahrenheit, or about 38 degrees celsius, is common in July) and exceptionally sunny in the summer, but frigid in the long winters. I was told at the London tasting, for example, that in 2022 there was still a foot of snow on the ground in April.

 

        Unusually, Washington is phylloxera-free, owing to the freezing winters and sandy soil, and disease pressure is very low. Still, vintage variation is a real issue. 2011 was so cold that the Cabernet Sauvignon wasn’t harvested until November at l’Ecole No. 41 winery in Walla Walla AVA (American Viticultural Area), which extends across the state line into Oregon.

 

          Two grapes stood out for me at the showcase, Merlot (muh-LOW in American parlance) and Chardonnay. As Ryan Pennington of l’Ecole No. 41 Winery put it, Washington is 'one of the great places in the world to grow Merlot’. The Merlots I tried were indeed outstanding, with a heady aroma of blackcurrants, very soft tannins and ample body.

 

         Horse Heaven Hills AVA, a windy area where the heat is moderated by the Columbia River, is ‘where Merlot kicks ass’, according to a representative of Chateau Ste. Michelle. Throughout the state, the Merlot benefits from the fact that the temperature falls off a cliff when the sun goes down in the summer, helping the grapes to retain acid. In August, the diurnal variation can be as much as 40 degrees fahrenheit.

          Merlot is, I think, superior to Cabernet Sauvignon in Washington, which can be very tannic and austere, at least when young (the oldest vintage I tried was 2020). A lot more Cabernet is present in the vineyards, though, as the sought-after grapes carry a higher price. I can say that Washington Merlot does age very well, for I had Chateau Ste. Michelle's sublime 2016 Canoe Ridge Merlot, from Horse Heaven Hills AVA, before going south. 

 

          Chardonnay, the second most prevalent grape after Cabernet Sauvignon, was the other varietal which really made an impression on me in London. The fruit is grown in cooler AVAs like Yakima Valley and Ancient Lakes (the wine regions in Washington have really evocative names). The latter is both further north than most of the state’s best-known vineyard zones, and the soils have a higher calcium content, making it a good spot for Chardonnay. The ones I sampled had a lovely rich mouthfeel and a delicious pear flavour.

 

          I only had a few wines from Oregon in London, although many were available to try. In my opinion, the most interesting thing about ‘The Beaver State’ is that it’s where D. B. Cooper boarded a plane in 1971. As for the wines, they are expensive and you have to really love Pinot Noir, which occupies about 60 percent of the vineyard area. 

 

          I imagine that, like my stepfather, I will never set foot in Washington. It’s very far away and I’d be reluctant to subject myself once again to the American airport experience (long ago I spent a night of despair in Newark Airport). There’s something about the place that will probably always appeal, though. It’s not just the excellent wines, it’s also the thought of a daily dose of sixteen or seventeen hours of warm sunshine in the summer. When you live in Scotland, that’s not to be sniffed at.

           Published in The Wine Merchant, April 2025. 

Wines of Austria

       The view from the rooftop terrace above the National Museum of Scotland is special. Within throwing distance to the west is Greyfriars Kirkyard, whose green lawns and sandy-coloured church stand out among the dark and gloomy buildings of the city’s Old Town. To the north, the famous castle sits on its rocky perch like a sentry, and you can make out tiny figures on the esplanade preparing to head through the dark arch and into its precincts.

          Towards the end of the year, I had the chance to enjoy this fine prospect thanks to my interest in Austrian wine. Before Covid, I had been to one previous masterclass in this splendid venue, when attendees were given the opportunity to taste thirty wines from Ribera del Duero. Twenty nine were full throttle reds, showcasing the tannic delights of Tinta del País. (A friend commented afterwards that he at last understood the meaning of the term palate fatigue.) A solitary rosado served as an exception. It reminded me of the time I went to a wine tasting in Gigondas, where the rosés seemed an afterthought, almost an embarrassment.

 

        No whites were available at either of those tastings, whereas they were very much the showstoppers at the Austrian wine event in Edinburgh. One of the best was a Riesling from the noted vineyard of Achleiten in Wachau (Domäne Wachau, Riesling Smaragd Ried Achleiten, 2021), where vines are planted on terraces above the River Danube. 

 

     Riesling is, perhaps surprisingly, a bit player in Austria, accounting for under five percent of the total vineyard area. It is reserved for stony soils which don’t suit Grüner Veltliner. As this Smaragd showed, however, it can be seriously good, and the best have the potential to last fifty years. I suggested to our host, a Master of Wine, that it had a late harvest character. She did not agree! According to her, it bore the hallmark apricot flavour of the Wachau and, upon retrying the wine, I had to acknowledge that she was absolutely right.

 

        While I drink more red than white wine, my preference is beginning to swing the other way. I was therefore excited to try a Gemischter Satz at the masterclass (Christ, Bisamberg Wiener Gemischter Satz, 2023), for I don’t think I’d ever had this Viennese specialty before. A field blend comprising many grapes, the aroma brought to mind a chewing gum I used to have on holiday in the south of France when I was a boy (my father would only go on holiday in France). I think it was the peach variety, but I could well be wrong, given that several decades have elapsed since then. At any rate, the wine was genuinely full-bodied and delicious. 

 

        Needless to say, the heavy hitter of Austrian wine is Grüner Veltliner, which occupies about a third of the country’s vineyard area. We tasted three of those and one, made from grapes grown in the Kremstal, whose loess soils are particularly well-suited to the grape, was spectacular (Wess, Krems 'Alte Reben' Grüner Veltliner, 2022). It was made using old vines (‘alte reben’), some of which were planted over 100 years ago.

 

   There was also a lovely oak-aged Sauvignon Blanc (Neumeister, Vulkanland Steiermark Sauvignon Blanc, Grosse STK Ried Moarfeitl, 2017) from the southern region of Styria, the ‘green heart of Austria’, according to the MW. Here grapes are grown at altitude and the climate is marginal; it gave the lie to the claim that Sauvignon is not suitable for ageing. 

 

        The one sparkling wine we sampled, a dry pet-nat from a producer in Burgenland on the Hungarian border (Pittnauer, 'Pitt Nat' Blanc, 2022), proved controversial. My friend and colleague was of the view that it smelled ‘like industrial waste’, and he considered the palate to be only ‘marginally better’. The Master of Wine felt it had a ‘yeasty, earthy’ character. I agreed that it was very aromatic, but in a good way!

 

This event was truly memorable, and it was a pity that the total attendance amounted to a mere seven people. My colleague left with nine free bottles of really good wine, despite informing our hosts that he felt the country still suffered from an image problem with British wine drinkers, owing to the antifreeze scandal in the 1980s. Still, as he put it, people appreciate honesty! 

Published in The Wine Merchant, February 2025.

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