First-Taste Guide to Wachau Riesling

15 min read

Wachau Riesling can deliver one of the most potent, flavorful and complex renditions of bone-dry Riesling in the world. Hailing from Austria’s small but prestigious Wachau DAC region, these Riesling wines offer a glimpse of greatness for casual tasters and wine obsessives. But there is more to these wines than just pedigree: a well-studied, understood terroir and increasingly sustainable practices mean that future of these wines shall be very interesting as well.

If you have never tasted a Riesling from the Wachau — or you just want to return to them and have a look around — this First-Taste Guide by wine writer Kevin Day will get you started … or reacquainted.

Welcome (Back) to the Wachau

“I always love to say that our Riesling are very open, as Alsatian Rieslings often are. But we also have the structure of German Riesling. We are somewhere in the middle.”
Mathias Hirtzberger
Winemaker

A few months ago, we charted a course down the Danube River to examine Austria’s most famous grape, Grüner Veltliner, from the nation’s most famous terroir — the Wachau. I had also been tasting numerous Wachau Riesling in preparation for a companion guide, but to be honest, I was fumbling for an idea of the Wachau’s singular vision. But as I rounded out that tasting, I came upon the Wachau Riesling wines of Mathias Hirtzberger of Weinhofmeisterei. Suddenly, an even more striking relief of the Wachau was etched in my memory: one of finesse.

“I always love to say that our Riesling are very open, as Alsatian Rieslings often are,” Hirtzberger told me when he and his partner, Hanna Hirtzberger, joined me for a conversation. My opening question had to do with where the Wachau fit in with the other iconic terroirs for Riesling. “But we also have the structure of German Riesling. So we are, in my personal opinion, somewhere in the middle.”

How the Wachau arrives at that definition — and where it likes to deviate from the norms — is a tale as many-layered as the terraces that line the Danube’s river bank.

3 Reasons to Seek Out Wachau Riesling

1. It is One of Europe’s Most Prestigious White Wine Regions – Chablis. Sancerre. The Mosel. Wachau. What do they all have in common? White grapes, stature and a long legacy of excellence. While these areas are constantly challenged by a wealth of exciting, emerging white wine regions, they are nonetheless part of the benchmarks we set to judge great wine. As a wine student, you have to know them; and as a wine obsessive, it pays to check back in on them from time to time. Given Wachau’s exciting developments, that time is now.
2. You Do Not Like Sweet Wines – Repeat after me: “Riesling is not sweet, it merely can be sweet!” It is always up to the producer, but in the Wachau, the predominant style is dry, and it is amazing how in this area’s terroir, Riesling can really flex its muscles.
3. You Think Sustainability is Important in Your Wine Choice – But you also know that’s a difficult thing to vet on your own. Fortunately, the entire Vinea Wachau organization is certified under the Sustainable Austria program. Going forward, you’ll know that each wine from within the Vinea Wachau winegrowers association was created with what the third-party program considers sustainable land-management and labor practices. Learn more.

What is Wachau Riesling?

The Wachau is a wine region in Austria located along the Danube River between Melk and Krems. While a majority of vineyards are planted to Grüner Veltliner, many of the top vineyard sites are reserved for Riesling, and that generally means rocky slopes high above the river. Since 1983, the region’s chief wine-producer association has been Vinea Wachau. This band of 200 or so producers has pledged to use only grapes from within the designated zone, and they devised a unique nomenclature to classify the alcoholic strength of their wines. (You can learn more about the Steinfeder, Federspiel and Smaragd nomenclature below).

However, in an effort to standardize with the rest of Austria’s wine sector, Wachau became a Districtus Austriae Controllatus (DAC) in 2020. Using this national system, wines are additionally categorized by Riedenweine (single-vineyard wines defined by the word Ried), Orstweine (essentially a village-level wine) and Gebietsweine (wine from a blend of plots from within the DAC zone). On the surface, this might sound like a Rubik’s cube, but it is actually fairly straightforward if you just remember a few key terms, and know that they can be tied together (such as a Riedenweine with Smaragd strength).

Just know that these wines will have the word “Riesling” printed on the label in addition to “Wachau,” so you won’t have to memorize specific village names to decode which grape you are drinking. (Phew).

About the Appellation and Its Wines

As we covered in our First-Taste Guide to Grüner Veltliner, the Wachau DAC is part of a triad of fine-wine regions specializing in Grüner Veltliner and Riesling. Just downstream is the Kremstal DAC, and to the north of Kremstal, lies the Kamptal DAC. As with Grüner Veltliner, Wachau’s Riesling is substantially more structured and potent when compared to its neighbors, and there is a longer history of wine growing as well.

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For history of the Wachau, consult the First-Taste Guide to Wachau Grüner Veltliner.

Explore Wachau History

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Terroir

The Wachau’s unique climate and multitude of microclimates was mostly covered in the First-Taste Guide to Grüner Veltliner under the Terroir section. In general, the nearby Pannonian Basin provides warmth through the valley’s eastern mouth, while cooler air currents flow in over the hills through a series of slot valleys perpendicular to the river, particularly the Spitzer Graben.

However, as this climate relates to Riesling, there are a few things to note.

For one, Riesling is planted unanimously on the upper slopes. “This is something decided by people in generations before,” said Hanna Hirtzberger. “The higher it is, the drier it is, the more pure it is, the better Riesling grows. Grüner pretty much works everywhere, but with Riesling if it is too wet, it rots before it ripens. So you try to find spots where there is soil, but not too deep or too rich.”

“We harvest during a time when the vines have already started to get ready for their winter rest. They will actually lose their leaves before we harvest in some years.”
Hanna Hirtzberger
Weinhofmeisterei

And since Riesling vines are planted high on the slopes on the rockiest of terrain, they face considerably more temperature fluctuation throughout the day than the Grüner Veltliner vineyards, and more ventilation as well.

Riesling vines are resilient plants, and they don’t mind the struggle of extremes. In fact, they often yield their best results in marginal climates. In the Wachau, these cooler, wind-tussled sites not only avoid rot, they lead to superb phenolic ripeness and longer maturation on the vine. And if there is a hallmark of Wachau Riesling — the thing that separates it from all other Riesling — it is that ripeness is pushed to its very limits.

“It takes quite long until we reach ripeness,” noted Hanna Hirtzberger. “And we harvest during a time when the vines have already started to get ready for their winter rest. They will actually lose their leaves before we harvest in some years.”

“But Riesling also has the capacity to fall [off] the vine” she said, adding that the German word riesel means “to trickle or fall down,” which lends the grape its name. “So we have to be quick when the grapes ripen, and this makes the Wachau unique in a certain way.”

Also accounting for Riesling’s awesome concentration in the Wachau is the soil. Fellow winemaker Franz-Josef Gritsch, whom I interviewed for the Wachau Grüner Veltliner guide, spoke to this specifically, saying that “every single vineyard has another soil.” Although he believes the best hillside sites for Riesling — whether they are on gneiss or granite — promote rapid drainage when it does rain. This prompts the vine roots to plunge deep underground, and whenever this happens, the resulting wine often features a phenomenon known as minerality because of how the acidity is fostered.

Steinfeder, Federspiel and Smaragd

In the 1980s, the region’s fledgling association of winegrowers, Vinea Wachau, devised a system to classify its members’ wines. However unlike in Burgundy, they focused on alcohol levels rather than cru-level sites (or, as the Germans did, sweetness levels, the inverse of alcohol). The concept was not to create a pyramid of quality, but rather to promote to consumers the varied styles of wine.

“I think it was a genius idea back in the ’80s,” said Hanna Hirtzberger. “Because it made sure that buyers from around the world were able to identify a certain style without knowing the producer or site.” She further explained that this standardization — when paired with the region’s reputation for high quality and little to no oak usage — provided a modicum of assurance for the wine inside the bottle.

The system called for three levels: Steinfeder (wines below 11.5% alcohol), Federspiel (wines between 11.5%-12.5% alcohol) and Smaragd (wines above 12.5% alcohol).

But two things happened: one was the Parker Era, which ran concurrently to this new system and rewarded wines of power over delicacy, fueling international demand for a certain style of wine. This reinforced an idea that Smaragd was a more desirable level, while diminishing Federspierl and Steinfeder.

Secondly, as Mathias Hirtzberger noted, came climate change. “Maybe, some years ago of course, it was difficult to get the grapes [ripened] for Smaragd. This is not so difficult anymore.” In fact, one of the puzzling features of this categorization is that the bars have not moved with the climate, as 12.5% alcohol is seen as low among white wine peers globally. Furthermore, alcohol level is already mandatory on wine labels, and many consumers already look for that data point when making a buying decision.

It is an issue that prompted Franz-Josef Gritsch to leave Vinea Wachau and embrace only the DAC rules. For him, even if the system is not intended to assign quality to alcohol, that is how it can be perceived. “Nobody in the [wine] world has a regulation for alcohol that says, ‘okay, more alcohol is a good wine, less alcohol is not a good wine,’” he told me earlier this year. “Plus, all the wine regions in Austria now use the DAC system. And so when we export, [we want to] have the same system for all regions, for that is the best way to bring Austrian wine to international markets.”

The DAC systems defines wines by whether they are from individual sites, or village-level and region-level blends of plots — a far more familiar categorization for today’s consumer.

“But village and cru can be confusing, too,” Mathias Hirtzberger summarized. “Sometimes you are missing a lot of information there as well.” They continue to support the Vinea Wachau categories, noting that in cooler vintages — like 2014 and 2022 — Federspiel ripeness becomes more common, offering more diversity to their offerings.

All great wine regions rise to their level because of healthy internal debate. But ultimately, consumer demand will define whether this system stays relevant, and increasingly, Vinea Wachau appears to be making a subtle but important shift on the value of these categories. Rather than seeing them as “winespeak” nomenclature, they are seeing them as important brands that communicate credibility on another matter: that sustainability certification.

Sustainability

“For a whole region to do this, it is quite something.”
Mathias Hirtzberger
Weinhofmeisterei

With the 2023 vintage, all Vinea Wachau-member wines are carrying a Sustainable Austria certification, and since the category designations for alcohol strength are trademarked under the organization and only available to its members, they now become — or so the organization hopes — the clearest indicator to consumers of responsible viticulture as well.

The wide-ranging Sustainable Austria certification includes the totality of work done by these wineries: their fuel and energy consumption, their physical treatment of the soil and the environment, as well as worker compensation and labor conditions. While the thresholds for the use of pesticides and herbicides are lower than most organic certification programs, Sustainable Austria is more focused on all the resources that go into agriculture.

For the Hirtzbergers, the key concept they appreciate most is the do-no-harm mantra: essentially, how can the region maintain high-quality wines without the exploitation of workers and future generations? But they also appreciate how the documentation and reporting of these standards will allow them to compare their efforts against their peers. “The idea is to get better and better,” Hanna Hirtzberger said.

If certain Sustainable Austria thresholds are not met by a Vinea Wachau member, they are given a course for remedy rather than banishment from the association. However, Hirzberger noted, for that vintage they are not allowed to use the Steinfeder, Federspiel or Smaragd brands on their wines.

“For a whole region to do this, it is quite something,” Mathias added.

However, the real challenge will not so much be adhering to these standards, but rather keeping pace with climate change’s speed. The Danube River has been trending lower in recent summers, making water availability — particularly for Grüner Veltliner — an issue. And the climate is undeniably getting warmer, with the summers growing longer, too. Sustainable Austria does not provide a blueprint on which grape varieties to plant five, 10 or 20 years from now — rather, it is a framework for the present. Might there come a time in the near future when growers will have to embrace new vessels of their unique terroir in the face of drier, warmer conditions? That question might threaten Grüner Veltliner more than Riesling, but it is a question that the wine trade is certainly pondering.

Your First-Taste

So what should you expect when you open a Wachau Riesling? For one, drama. While often applied to Wachau Riesling, the term “power” is a bit loaded, as it certainly does not apply to the Steinfeder and Federspiel-level wines you might encounter. “Intensity” is also a bit of a misnomer, as I have found a tremendous amount of subtlety to these wines as well, especially those that are Riedenweine.

Drama on the other hand, captures a bit of the emotion that rises from a glass of Wachau Riesling. Sometimes you sense the sunlight, other times you feel the wind, but its the harmony of these natural elements that makes the best Wachau Riesling wines so dramatic.

If you are turned off by the “petrol” note that Riesling — particularly German Riesling — sometimes conveys, take comfort in the fact that it rarely appears in the Wachau. The reason for this is that ultra-late harvest, which according to Mathias Hirtzberger, brings down the levels of terpene that produce TDN, the compound responsible for petrol aromas. Hirtzberger also stated that if it tends to appear, it is usually only three to four years after vintage.

And as for cellaring these wines? “My personal advice,” Mathias Hirtzberger told me “is to drink them after five to seven years and you’ll be happy.”

What follows are six wines I found most compelling, including new releases and two in that five- to seven-year window. If you’ve never tasted a Wachau Riesling before, do your best to find this first wine.

2022 Weinhofmeisterei “Zier” Wachau Riesling Federspiel

For my First-Taste recommendation,  I would recommend this wine from Mathias Hirtzberger at the middle-tier Federspiel + Gebietsweine level. For one, the 2022 “Zier” (★★★★ 3/4) shows that Smaragd + Riedeweine do not have a monopoly on the top tier, as it bursts with elegance, subtlety and beauty. I enjoyed this wine more than many of the single-vineyard Smaragd’s tasted. There are faintly tropical notes as well that lend intrigue, and a second and third glass are fairly irresistible.

But I will also add that as a Gebietsweine, it shows the wisdom of occasionally blending multiple plots for a singular interpretation of the Wachau’s soul. Here, high elevation plots from Kollmitz, Gaisberg, Ralais and Pluris are blended together, creating a very nice harmony.

         

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2022 Weinhofmeisterei Ried Kollmitz Wachau Riesling Smaragd

2022 Weinhofmeisterei Ried Bach Wachau Riesling Smaragd

No other Wachau Riesling wines captivated me as much as Hirtzberger’s 2022 Ried Kollmitz  (★★★★★) and Ried Bach (★★★★★). Tasted alongside one another, they showed the variety of terroir and its potential within the Wachau.

At 1,500 feet high, the Reid Kollmitz is so high, so cold and so windy that there is very low fungal pressure, meaning Hirtzberger can take a cleaner approach year after year. But it takes a long time for the grapes to mature. In 2022, they harvested on the 3rd of November. The Reid Bach, however, is very warm, its steep aspect and stone terraces acting like a solar trap, which allows for a higher degree of ripeness.

Ried Kollmitz skews mineral and zesty, with distinct lime tones and semi-tart, semi-sweet kiwi-like fruits. It is a fabulous wine that plays tricks and constantly evolves. The Ried Bach, on the other hand, resembles a ripe peach at the end of summer. It is slightly creamier, moves a little slower, but has tremendous depth and a stony persistence that lifts everything up.

         

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Other Noteworthy Wines Tasted

2021 Gritsch Ried 1000-Eimerberg Wachau Riesling Federspiel

Franz-Josef Gritsch’s Ried 2021 1000-Eimerberg (★★★★ 3/4) represents a departure of sorts from the main thread of Wachau Riesling in that it is aged in large oak barrels, which seems to relax some of the tension in the wine. And there is plenty of tension to be felt in the first place since this comes from the coldest section of the Wachau — the Spitzer Graben — from a vineyard with a 70% grade to it. It has wonderful sapidity and zesty acidity to carry the peach and brown fruit tones as well as a hint of honeysuckle florality on the nose. Again: it is nice to see such complexity and intrigue from the Federspiel level. Don’t dismiss this category outright. (Note: Gritsch’s departure from Vinea Wachau came after this vintage release, so future versions of this wine will not carry any of the three marks).

       

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2019 Grabenwerkstatt Ried Trenning Wachau Riesling Smaragd

Another excellent Riesling at the Smaragd + Riedenweine level is Grabenwerkstatt’s 2019 Ried Trenning (★★★★ 3/4), which begins to show the transformation of Wachau’s rendition as it ages. Coming from the estate’s highest elevation and coolest vineyard, the wine transmits its yellow pear with lime-twist aromatics on a wave of seemingly salt-tinged air. The rather voluminous body nonetheless has substantial acidity that registers a bit prickly but persistent through the long finish. This was the only wine tasted that showed any traces of TdA (ye old petrol note), but it was very minor.

       

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2015 Högl Ried Bruck Wachau Riesling Smaragd

Another prized vineyard in the Spitzer Graben is the Ried Bruck, from which Högl makes an excellent Smaragd Riesling (★★★★ 3/4). Here, we have nearly 10 years of age to see how Wachau Riesling unfolds with cellar age, and indeed, the tension seems to have eased a bit, like tight muscles in a sauna. The fruit character has also evolved into an apricot-meets-mango-like sensation that is rich and flavorful, all while moving along at a quick clip thanks to the wine’s acidity. Yet the hallmark of Wachau Riesling — minerality —remains firmly intact here, keeping those opulent notes in check.

         

 

Note: Wines featured in this article were provided as samples upon my request. Learn more about our editorial policies. Select quotes were edited for clarity.