I am basically a newbie to Riesling and have found I prefer the dry ones. I have no experience with Austrian Riesling. Is it possible to characterize the typical differences between dry Austrian, Alsatian and German Riesling and if so what would they be?
Just try one of each in a blind tasting and make your own opinion.
In order to avoid average wines, take a Dönnhoff for Germany, a Clos Sainte-Hune for France and for Austria, check with Falstaff website in order to find a good one.
Please try to get wines with minimum 10 years old and then make your own opinion. By far the best way to understand their styles.
I second the idea of trying, but Clos Ste. Hune is not the place to start. It’s the most expensive wine in Alsace and one of the most expensive Rieslings in the world.
I happen to really like this Wine-Searcher article comparing the Rieslings of Alsace and Germany: Germany and Alsace's Battle of the Rieslings | Wine-Searcher News & Features. It’s perhaps a bit more philosophical than you’re looking for, but it’s really interesting.
Jeff, Austrian Riesling is generally my favorite version (although I will concede that I’ve had a number of CSH vintages that have absolutely blown me away).
I think the only thing in Germany really comparable to Austrian Riesling are the GG bottlings - virtually everything else has some degree of residual sugar. But like the GG releases, Austrian riesling can also be relatively pricey because “home grown” demand for the wines is so strong.
Also be aware that if you have been trying things like German Kabinett & Spatlese, a typical Austrian riesling will be significantly higher in alcohol content - 14% is a typical reading, whereas your German Kabinett’s might come in around 9-11%.
I think my favorite producer might be Nikolaihof, but they are also idiosyncratic enough from a style standpoint such that I wouldn’t necessarily recommend that you start with them. In the Wachau, Hirtzberger, Alzinger, FX Pichler, Knoll, and Prager are all top flight producers. And if you move down the river to Kamptal/Kremstal, Nigl and Schloss Gobelsburg are two other pretty decent winemakers.
Just my two cents but I probably would not even go there being that you have so many different styles in German dry Rieslings, just as there is often a massive difference between a light entry level wine from Wachau (Austria) and a very ripe and big Smaragd.
You’ll find there is a range of styles in all three regions, from lighter with good acid to ripe, soft and unctuous. So don’t draw conclusions from one or two from each country.
Happily, the quality – at least of what we see here in the US – is generally high in all three areas.
I often find I prefer the cheaper ones, which tend to be leaner and (to my palate) fresher. You generally have to pay up for the bigger, riper wines.
Overall I prefer Austrian Riesling. You can generally be assured the wines are full dry, my preference. I find their flavor profile tend toward summer pit fruits, white flower and shist mineral. The Alsace producers I really like I can count on one hand with a few fingers left for other things. CSH of course can be the ultimate expression with an ultimate price. BTW, had the 2007 CSH Wednesday night. Lacked precision I usually find in that wine in other vintages. Germany, I leave opinions to those who know the wines but there are too many sugar land mines for me to try and navigate.
I buy 10:1 Austria over Germany. There are some really good German Trockens, but the advent of GG (see the other concurrent German thread) has pushed a lot of those to higher ripeness and price levels. My favorite used to be Donnhoff’s Felsenberg Trocken, but now that there is GG, he no longer makes that wine.
You can get excellent Austrian Riesling in the $20-40 range, and up. Unfortunately, assuming the PCLB online inventory is useful, it doesn’t look like you have much choice there. But I’m sure you do some shopping in NJ and DC, where there are much greater selections.
The Wagner Stempel Vom Porphyr that Panzer sells near you is one that I know to be outstanding.
Thanks guys. Just about all my Riesling experience is from Panzer. I agree about the WS Vom Porphyl. I like that a lot. Also, some of the Schafer Frohlich wines like Vulkangestein.
I haven’t had many from Alsace - just a few from Justin Boxler and Weinbach. Those seemed a bit richer and fatter.
Bob, I will have search out a few of those producers as I wouldn’t know where to begin in Austria.
Jeff
If you want good dry riesling at a reasonable price then you should not neglect Australian wines. There are many threads on top producers that you can search (depends upon which you have access to).
I’ll chime in here as well. I’m sort of an agnostic riesling drinker: don’t really care where it comes from, as long as it is well made. So what do I look for? Balance, over all. It can have sugar…or not. Acid is a MUST. Acid is the cracker whip in the lion cage to tame the beast of the Teutonic soul! Flabby is definitely BAD. Extract is GOOD.
So, starting with these assumptions, let us examine…
Austrian riesling can be Very very good. It can also be alcoholic to the point you feel the burn. Oh yeah, obvious alcohol is also a no-no when it comes to our beloved grape. Sometimes I get the feeling Austrian vintners compete on who can make the biggest baddest riesling. Subtlety is not usually their strong suit, but these can be sooo nice with food that a little body can make you stand up and notice, kind of like that homely girl next door who grew up looking really hot, but I digress.
German dry riesling is still an enigma to me after all these years. I am not really clear what their aging pattern is. Sometimes they can be piercingly beautiful and feel like lifted angels ascending to heaven. Other times they are little shrill monsters that you want to kick down the stairs and never see again. Youse pay your money and take your chances. Some of the ones I like best now are getting into the super-premium category of pricing, effectively blocking me out ($70+ range). Good when their on game, crappy when their not.
Alsace wines are cheep (well, excepting with Clos St. Hune) for the most part and act the part as well. They tend to not reach the highs of the ones grown in the Fatherland, but then you won’t be paying as much either. I think the diffuse nature of the French rieslings could be because wineries there focus on many varieties, instead of just 1 or 2. These can be nice weekday wines.
New York. I know you didn’t include these, but you really ought to try them. I think they are making inroads into the dryer style and have noticed serious improvement from when I first started tasting them in the 1980’s. You don’t live that far away and it would make a nice little trip for you and yours.
I was going to say this. I love Australian rieslings, though I don’t know that they’re exactly interchangeable with Old World versions (though there I also prefer Austria and Alsace), any more than NZ sauvignon blanc is substitutable with the Loire.
For Alsace, try Trimbach Cuvée Frederick Emile and Albert Mann Schlossberg. Two different styles, both excellent.
I agree with pretty much all of that. I would just say on the Germans that it’s safer to buy Trockens from the regions along the Rhine, where it’s warmer. The Trockens from the Mosel-Saar-Ruwer can be tough sledding because of their acidity.
Perhaps the very best old dry rieslings I’ve ever had have been from Salomon in Austria. Some from the 80s and 90s came on the market five or seven years ago – straight from the cellar, as I recall – and they were spectacular. Just off-the-charts good.
I also bought a few bottles of Donnhoff’s 98 Trockens, which drank wonderfully in the mid- and late 2000s. Beautiful evolution in the bottle.
I struggle with Austrian Riesling a bit. I like and respect them, but I often don’t get excited enough to pay the high tariffs they command.
I find them very different from Alsatian Rieslings, even though they’re both considered more full-bodied and dry. Often times I find the Austrians just have more of everything – more fruit and more acid, but it’s a coarse acidity and the elements just aren’t working together. Last week I had a 2012 Knoll Loibner Smaragd and while it was good, the buzzsaw-like acidity I often find in Austrian wines sticks out like a sore thumb. It just did not have the elegance and refinement of the 2012 Weinbach Cuvee Theo I had the week before that, despite being similar in weight. Whereas the Knoll was working hard, the Weinbach was effortless.
I like the sugar, hides head in shame…
My opinion:
Austrian Rieslings represent a very wide range, so hard to generalize, but the top-examples usually show slightly more body, but less pronounced acidity than German R.s - they are almost always totally dry while in Germans you often can find traces of residal sugar even if they are labelled DRY …(and many are oficially off-dry)
The best Austrians show a great combination between fruitiness and minerality, with depth and length - and they can really age …
Alsacians sometimes are a bit on the alcoholic side, but can also have a bit of residual sugar, acidity is less pronounced than in Germans (so some can be a bit “heavy”) … the best sites show an interesting minerality, but others are lacking …
I could name you dozens of good Austrian Rieslings, but I have no idea what´s available for you …
I don’t know that I can think of any similarities between them.
Choose any two, and you’re looking at “Night & Day” or “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus”.
In fact, the various flavor profiles are so different that you’d have to wonder whether the “Rieslings” involved are even from the same variety of vinifera.
And if they are really the same variety of vinifera, then those disparities would be a strong argument in favor of the idea that nothing reflects terroir & micro-climate quite like the Riesling grape.
[Although a lot of people feel that Chardonnay best reflects terroir & micro-climate, and, having had a Hiedler dessert chardonnay from Austria, with a little bottle age on it, I can understand that point of view as well.]
I don’t know the 2012 Knoll, but I certainly don’t think of Austrian rieslings being tart. Certainly not compared to German Trockens.
It sounds like you may prefer wines with lower acids. The special cuvee Alsatian bottlings, in particular, tend to be quite rich and rather low in acid.
+1 on this, great advice across the board.
Have fun exploring all three regions, generally speaking, they all produce a very high level of quality throughout the different price points.
If you did do a blind choice of a top producer from each region, I would suggest Alzinger as a top Austrian producer whose wines represent a more typical style, and Schloss Gobelsburg Riesling “Tradition” as a CSH quality wine from Austria.
You might also consider the Trimbach Cuvée Frederic Emile (the 90 was my own personal “turn the lights on” dry Riesling) instead of the Clos St.
Hune for Alsace.