A producer I’ve long been saying I need to try as the history always interests me. A retailer recently sent out an offer and thinking of giving them a shot? Any opinions or general thoughts on the winery are appreciated.
Love their wines pretty much across the board. Can’t go wrong.
Tom
+1
From the cheapest to the most expensive the wines are great.
These wines have a lot of fans, and you should listen to them. I think I’m the only one I know who doesn’t really like a lot of them, and that focuses on the high end. While I can recognize the complexity, and they really are impressive, there’s a distinctive savory, developed component that’s tough to specify that I really don’t like. Most often, I think Vaseline (not TDN/petrol). This might be very personal. It’s strongest in the Vinothek and other longer aged wines, but I notice it in the younger single vineyards as well. It is not just development. I like aged Riesling and Gruner. It’s a sort of funkiness that I suspect may be related to whatever yeasts (and other microbes?) live in their cellar. I’m not talking about anything that I consider a flaw. It probably isn’t even worth saying this much about, except that some of the wines are expensive, and the praise I usually see could have had me buying quite a bit without tasting at some point if I saw great pricing and selection. I now know that would have been a mistake on my part because of my personal preference. Even I can recognize the very high quality, though, and the wines are definitely worth trying.
1 Like
Add me to the fanboy list.
These are some of my favorite wines on the planet.
Go long and deep.
Thanks for the initial input here. It’s not an exclusive offer or anything, from Rare Wine Co. This offer is…
Nikolaihof’s 2013 Vom Stein Riesling Smaragd Trocken & 2015 Im Weingebirge Grüner Veltliner Federspiel
$30 per which seems fair? Just caught my eye as I’ve been wanting to explore the lower end to get a baseline for the winery for awhile.
Appreciate the light “warning” as well Doug, interesting although not something I can mentally taste through verbiage.
This captures my view well, although I may like them a tad more than you do. They are high quality but also very unique in a sort of curious way. I don’t really dislike them—I even buy them in very small quantities—but I much much prefer Alzinger, Prager, Brundlmayer, and others.
Those two wines are a very good place to start.
it was a great offer. id be on it if I wasn’t already getting angry looks with every wine shipment I get in this season
I can see Doug’s complaint about a savory component, but that shouldn’t scare you off these well made wines. Perhaps you’re tasting terroir?? My favorite is perhaps the Steiner Hund.
opening the 2000 of this tonight, as a matter of fact. Paid $36.99.
Great producer, great people, and awesome estate with cool history. Buy with confidence that you are getting very well-made, genuine wines.
Definitely a fan and he’s a nice guy to talk to. Both you mention are very nice and I’ve purchased them myself. If you want a nice easy drinking intro, find the 2016 Zwickl (named after the beer style which they like). I drank 3 or 4 of them in the last year.
They are proudly unconventional.
I have also had experiences like Doug and taste before buying multiples but have had plenty of wins.
The 2017 Hefeabzug GV is my most recent try and it was solid.
Here’s a write up that I posted from a visit to the estate last year:
I too am a fan of the producer. Very well made, transparent and highly drinkable wines. Definitely wines for food though, I think it is fair to say that there is a degree of austerity at least to the lower end wines (high acid, low-to-moderate concentration, savory style).
Aldehydes, and sometimes some acetic-acid bacteria-related compounds. I noticed it in their longer aged wines as well. Sometimes smells to me like sharpie marker or fresh paint. They leave them in cask for an extraordinary amount of time in some cases and don’t top up. Slow oxygen ingress will cause some of the native yeasts to coalesce at the top, and AAB will form a film over it all as it loves the oxygen.
So that note is a bit of a common thread through their wines. I don’t dislike it up to a point, but in some of the bottlings the secondary stuff is a bit overpowering. One of my favourites was their Gelber Muskateller. Super varietal, squeaky clean and very refreshing.
The only other producer in the Wachau I saw with this “sharpie-marker” note is Knoll - and then only on their extended-aged in foudre stuff.
With the exception of the Vinothek where I loved the first vintage and was disappointed by subsequent years I’m also a fan. Steiner Hund is IMO their best wine but if I was in buying mode would have been tempted by the RWC offer. It looks like a good introduction but I’d suggest going light until you’ve had a chance to try them.
Another vote for Nikolaihof - the Vom Stein Federspiel has been my go-to wine in more recent years, but I like a lot of their stuff. They are somewhat idiosyncratic in terms of Austrian producers - at least IMO, on the opposite end of the spectrum from producers like FX Pichler or Hirtzberger, as they generally seem to be more into elegance and filigree than “shock & awe”.
This makes sense. It is a chemical smell that I find very off-putting, and I am confident that it has nothing to do with terroir. Sharpie is almost as close as Vaseline, for me.
For me, some Nikolaihof wines show that idiosyncratic “Nikolaihof funk” - which is at best quite interesting and at worst rather distracting - but certainly not all of them. Some wines have been thoroughly clean, precise and showing wonderful purity of fruit - although in the leaner style typical of the house.
To me, that Nikolaihof funk is certainly not aldehydes nor does it feel acetic either, and it can appear in young wines as much as in those aged for extended periods of time. Checking out my TNs, the descriptors I’ve used are “musty old furniture”, “potato peels”, “raw potato” and “damp wool”. It feels more like some kind of problem with the hygiene, probably having something to do with those very old oak vessels they use. That would also explain why some wines are so clean and precise and others are funky and odd - no matter the age; some vessels might be infected with some bacteria or other bugs, others are not.
However, I don’t have extensive experience on Nikolaihof, having tasted only a dozen or so of their wines. With that small a sample it is hard to see the real picture.