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Weingut Högl

Veteran Josef Högl, a delightfully wry commentator on matters vinous, has been joined full-time by his son Georg, who last year showed me some of their 2013s, which I subsequently retasted, along with other Högl 2013s, via samples or local purchases. The steep sides of the Spitzer Graben with their high altitude, forested upper slopes and distance from the Danube are naturally conducive to late ripening at relatively low must weights, and this is an estate that essays single-vineyard Federspiel bottlings, even in vintages (of which there have been several over the past dozen years) when many Wachau growers bottle almost no Federspiel and then only multi-site cuvées. The rigors of these sites’ steepness and microclimate austerity are compounded by fragmentation--for example, Högl’s holdings in the Schön vineyard alone constitute 57 disparate terraces. No wonder that this is also a sector of the Wachau late to abandon mixed agriculture, and the Högls continue to hedge their commercial bets by growing Wachauer Marille, the highly prized and distinctively delicious local strain of apricot.

With rare exceptions (one discussed in this report) the Högl wines are raised in tank, and most are bottled by the end of April. Quality at this address, despite consistent adulation in the Austrian press, has always struck me as variable, though the best wines, often including Federspiel, have proven delightful and worth cellaring short-term. Happily, most of the 2013s I retasted this year had improved--one dramatically--even if the Högl collection as a group arguably doesn’t do full justice to their sites' or to the vintage’s outstanding quality potential.

From 2013: A Great Vintage for Austrian Riesling and Grüner Veltliner (Nov 2015) by David Schildknecht

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2013 Grüner Veltliner Federspiel Wachauer Weingarten

Release Price: $25

Color: White

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