2002 Nigl Riesling Privat- Austria, Niederösterreich, Kremstal (6/18/2020)
Rich golden color. Very slight petrol nose with a bit of apricot. Dry on the palate with lively acidity and low residual sugar. Nice fruit complexity and quite enjoyable. I opened another a few months ago which was flawed or over the hill? This one is mucho better. Sadly my last bottle.
Addendum:
Update after a few hours…
Explosive complex nose and palate to match. Really good intense dry fruit. In the style of Trimbach CSH. So much cut. A great example of top notch Austrian Riesling. A special wine.
Nice. I don’t see many notes on these wines, but I know a few board members enjoy them. I bought a few bottles each of 2010-2013. I sort of lost interest as my Austrian dollars went toward wines that impressed me more in their youth. Nigl Privat is one of very few dry Rieslings that I think is pointless to open on release. Now I realize how great these can be with 10+ years and sort of wish I’d kept buying. Maybe I’ll start back up again.
Agreed, Doug - probably one of the more underappreciated great white wines. I think part of the problem is that you really need to be on the lookout for these wines, because at least IMO, distribution can be a little iffy. And if you haven’t tried it, the Hochacker bottling is also very good, if not quite at the level of the Privat. My recollection is that Alan Weinberg is also a fan of these wines.
Personally I love the Nigl riesling and gv Privats with some age though a number of my friends prefer to put their Austrian dollars elsewhere. To be fair it’s hard to argue with putting them towards Alzinger and Prager .
R Squared has a number of older Nigl vintages in magnum.
2002 Nigl Riesling Privat- Austria, Niederösterreich, Kremstal (6/11/2016)
Huge nose of apricot and some secondary notes. The body is rich and ripe but perfectly poised. The palate is rich with yellow stone fruit and veined with minerality. Absolutely lovely. (97 pts.)
Great note. I’ve had Austrian producers tell me 2002 is the best vintage of the century. I still have a couple of these, hard to open because then I won’t have them…
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