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Högl

I tasted with young Georg Högl in a recently built and architecturally striking reception facility, on what was my first visit to this estate in a number of years, though one that left me convinced I need to put the Högls on my annual agenda. (In several recent vintages, they have shown me their wines at the biennial VieVinum exposition, or sent me samples.) Like nearly all of their neighbors in the Spitzer Graben, they suffered severe losses to the three-night-long frost in late April 2016. Overall, the Schön and Bruck sites were down by 60-70%, an economic hardship ameliorated by the extent to which this estate has in recent years incorporated sites along the Danube in Spitz, Weissenkirchen, Dürnstein and Loiben. By the time the vines in Schön and Bruck had budded out a second time, three weeks had elapsed, “but the quantity from what second growth we got was so small,” explained Högl, “that we ended up harvesting more or less at the same time we would expect from any somewhat late growing season.” Picking got going seriously at the beginning of October in Loiben and finished in mid-November, which is by no means unusually late for the Spitzer Graben. “There was one day,” recalled Högl, “when we picked just 1,200 kilograms [1.3 US tons] from a 1.5-hectare [3.7-acre] area.” While bottling of Federspiel was delayed a month, until February, all of the Smaragde were bottled in April, due, said Högl, to there having been so little wine overall, whereas in a more normal year there would be a second round of Smaragd bottlings in June or July. The vintage 2016 collection here makes the best of this growing season’s potential for ripe flavors in combination with animation and relative alcoholic levity. As such, it clearly surpasses the Högl 2015s, several of which I re-tasted alongside the 2016s.

In an encouraging new development, the Högls have become the latest to undertake restoration of steep Spitzer Graben slopes that had long since gone to scrub - in this instance, a potentially prime portion of the Ried Schön. They estimate that the project will take 7-8 years to complete and involve 20 terraces. “My grandmother,” related Georg Högl, “thinks this parcel was last farmed in the 1960s, and says it was known as Höll [hell] because the soil and rock here heated up so much in the summer.” Something to look forward to in the nearer term is fruit from a newly planted section of the Brandstatt vineyard from which the Högls envision a Spitzer Graben Steinfeder. (For some additional details concerning this estate and its vineyards and practices, readers are invited to consult the introduction to my report on its 2013 collection.)

From Austria’s Riesling & Grüner Veltliner: 2016’s Challenges Met (Dec 2018) by David Schildknecht

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2016 Grüner Veltliner

Color: White

2016 Grüner Veltliner

2016 Grüner Veltliner Federspiel J. & G.

2016 Grüner Veltliner Federspiel Schön

2016 Grüner Veltliner Smaragd 1000-Eimerberg

2016 Grüner Veltliner Smaragd Schön

2016 Grüner Veltliner Smaragd Kaiserberg G-G

2015 Grüner Veltliner Smaragd Kaiserberg

2016 Riesling Federspiel Bruck

2016 Riesling Smaragd Bruck

2016 Riesling Smaragd Loibner Vision

2016 Gelber Muskateller Federspiel J & G

2016 Gelber Muskateller Smaragd Bruck

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