Winemaker Notes
Fresh and herbal on the pure and flinty nose. Round, rich and powerful Riesling. Intensity, grip and mineral tension. Long and complex finish.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
This has a very fluid and ripe feel with a wealth of herbs and peppery notes. The palate has a supple, white-peach and apricot core or flavor, delivered in a very open-knit and approachable mode.
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Wine Enthusiast
The nose is shy but a tangerine peel zestiness rises from the glass, almost with an ethereal edge. The palate, right now, is open and bold. Ripe Mirabelle fruit almost bounces with juiciness, framed by more of that zesty tangerine peel. The palate is concentrated and energetic, generous but racy and certainly brimming with fruity, vivid freshness. Drink 2025–2045.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2018 Steiner Riesling Ried Pfaffenberg Selection is pure, fresh and herbal on the pure and flinty nose. On the palate, this is a round, rich and quite powerful Riesling with remarkable intensity, grip and mineral tension. The finish is long and complex and promises good aging potential.
Riesling possesses a remarkable ability to reflect the character of wherever it is grown while still maintaining its identity. A regal variety of incredible purity and precision, this versatile grape can be just as enjoyable dry or sweet, young or old, still or sparkling and can age longer than nearly any other white variety. Somm Secret—Given how difficult it is to discern the level of sweetness in a Riesling from the label, here are some clues to find the dry ones. First, look for the world “trocken.” (“Halbtrocken” or “feinherb” mean off-dry.) Also a higher abv usually indicates a drier Riesling.
As Austria’s most prestigious wine growing region, the landscape of the Wachau is—not surprisingly—one of its most dramatic. Millions of years ago, the Danube River chiseled its way through the earth, creating steep terraces of decomposed volcanic and metamorphic rock. Harsh Ice Age winds brought deposits of ancient glacial dust and loess to the terrace’s eastern faces. Today these steep surfaces of nutrient-poor and fast draining soil are home to some of Austria’s very best sites for both Grüner Veltliner and Riesling.
Wachau is small, comprising a mere three percent of Austria’s vine surface and, considering relatively low yields, represents a miniscule proportion of total wine production. Diurnal temperature shifts in Wachau facilitate great balance of sugar and phenolic ripeness in its grapes. At night cold air from the Alps and forests in the northwest displace warm afternoon air, which gets sucked upstream along the Danube.
Its sites are actually so varied and distinct that more emphasis is going into vineyard-designated offerings even despite grape variety. Grüner Veltliner and Riesling are most prominent, but the region produces Chardonnay, Pinot Blanc (Weissburgunder), Pinot Gris, Sauvignon Blanc and Zweigelt among other local variants.