DIn Lower Austria – i.e. in the wine-growing regions along the Danube including Vienna and the Weinviertel – the 2021 vintage is one of the really big ones of the current century, like some other vintages before it, most recently in 2019. Because bad vintages can no longer afford any business and still do the most challenging weather conditions are mastered, the talk of great vintages is one thing above all: marketing.
In any case, it is only a few years later that you find out whether a vintage is really exceptional. Based on those wines that are not bottled for quick consumption, but for the long haul. It is those wines, mostly from individual sites, that are so special that they are marketed under the site name, recognizable in Austria by the word “Ried” (roughly: Ried Kreuzberg). Their true character usually only emerges after a few years of bottle aging, while before that the fruity aromas of the grape variety(s) are in the foreground.
