2013 Burgunder Brut

The Steiningers, with their many grape varieties and special focus on sparkling wines, began picking in mid-September 2015. But serious harvest of Grüner Veltliner and Riesling didn’t commence until the beginning of October. “Ordinarily we pick into mid-November,” related Eva Steininger, “but this year we were finished at the beginning of that month.” Across the board, an approach was adopted that has otherwise only occasionally been employed chez Steininger, namely to arrest the primary fermentation on their Sekt base wines so that the secondary fermentation could rely largely on residual sugar rather than dosage, thus keeping finished alcohol close to the estate norm. There is a certain irony here, in that Karl Steininger was the Kamptal’s sparkling wine pioneer as well as a prime mover behind the recently established legal hierarchy of Austrian sparkling wine that includes a “Grosse Reserve” category designed to showcase individual villages or vineyards, yet his typically 13-13.5 percent alcohol sparklers come in for criticism from some of his Sekt-bottling neighbors as “too heavy for the genre.” But as Karl Steininger emphasized, “we elected to go our own way with Sekt,” and I don’t anticipate the resultant style changing significantly. As it happens, finished alcohol levels in the non-sparkling Steininger 2015s are lower than in several recent vintages, and while the wines are slightly less focused and animated than their 2014 and 2013 counterparts, they are luscious, enveloping and ripely flavored almost to the point of luxuriance. High hopes that 2014 would prove especially amenable to champagnization were slightly dampened by my early tastings of recently disgorged Steininger Sekt. A Grüner Veltliner that I tasted in June 2016 was disappointingly simple and vegetal, while the corresponding sparkling Riesling was downright grassy. (For details concerning this estate’s vineyards, practices and recent history, readers are invited to consult the extended introduction to my reports on its 2013s and 2014s.)

Inspired by a holiday in Champagne, Karl Steininger and his wife Brigitta, who comes from a wine-growing family in Zöbing, began focusing on traditional method sparkling wines in 1989, after having already in 1980 begun transforming his family’s mixed farm and its then-tiny vine acreage into a wine estate. Daughter Eva and her husband Peter now complete the team, which farms 50 hectares spread out around Langenlois, the dominant site for sparkling base wines being Wechselberg. The Steiningers have become increasingly ambitious in terms of both fruit quality and élevage, and after branching into numerous and at times unusual mono-cépage sparklers, they have adopted a project of single-vineyard sparkling wines that debuted auspiciously in 2011 with a 2008 Riesling Heiligenstein. Finishing sweetness for the range of sparkling wines here tends to hover around four or five grams per liter and proves consistently supportive without being expressly evident. Each year the estate is adding another large acacia cask to supplement what was long a reliance on stainless steel. The still wines here can also be impressive, as my too-brief recent tasting session with the Steiningers reminded me.

I have only twice tasted a Steininger sparkling wine more than a couple of years after disgorgement--which takes place on request or as required, the date thereof always being indicated on the label--and then only of their Heiligenstein Riesling. So I am for now simply making an educated guess as to how various cuvées might hold up in bottle.