One case was sent to Texas by mistake and I never did receive it. The next case had just six bottles. I did taste at the winery in 2023 – hurriedly, as these things are done – but now I can finally taste at least most of the “important” wines, properly.
Let me take you back to a late Spring afternoon in 1993, when I sat in the garden at Landhaus Bacher (in Mautern, in the Wachau) and tasted a bunch of growers’ wines. I’d cribbed a list of interesting names from various sources, having decided to assemble an Austrian wine portfolio, and since I didn’t have the time I’d need – weeks, from the look of things – to visit each producer, I asked for help from the Austrian Wine Marketing Board – even then an admirably competent and helpful organization – to do the necessary triaging.
That afternoon I tasted Hiedler and Berger and Bründlmayer (who came personally) and many others – and Nigl.
Those wines were implosive, head-shaking, vivid beyond description with brilliance and nuance. They seemed to be spirit-kin of Müller-Catoir, and this was all the more astonishing because Martin Nigl’s first vintage was 1986, before which his father delivered most of his fruit to a coöp. Nigl was one of many shocks I received that day; who were these people, and how were they not known?
Therafter I received a succession of stellar vintages – 1993, ’95, 97, even the difficult ’98, and of course the classic ’99. Nigl had grown into one of my bellwether producers. But in the early aughts, there were signs of trouble, mostly in the form of wines with out-of-control alcohol levels. The estate was in transition from its hidden little corner up in Priel to what was becoming the Nigl winery/hospitality complex down in Senftenberg below the castle ruin. Was this the reason a few wines had slipped away? I wasn’t qualified to judge, but I had to talk about it with Martin, because he strongly preferred to have consistent and reliable sales for the wines in my offering, and if I “rejected” this wine or that – wines I’d offered before – this was annoyingly disorderly.
So we “discussed” it. I’m not sure he knew what I was talking about. (I’m not always sure I myself know what I’m talking about….) Higher alcohols were in the zeitgeist at that time in Austria, and add to that a grower’s tendency to tunnel vision of his own production, and for a couple years I’m not sure Martin and I “understood each other.” One year he gave me two week-apart pickings of the same wine, with a difference of 1% alc between them. Neither was especially successful (and a blend of the two was better than either, much to my frustration and his consternation) but the lower alcohol wine was at least nicer to drink, even while sacrificing some of what we’d call expressiveness.
The problem, if it was a problem and not just my fussy nature, seemed to resolve a few years later, and Nigl returned to form, mostly.
At their best it’s hard to imagine anything better. But if this group of wines is anything to go by, there seems to be a tendency for a couple wines to slip off the rails from time to time. The best wines I tasted, not necessarily the “prestige” bottlings, were just scintillating – an apex of quality, refinement and “narrative” for white wine. In essence, Nigl. And then there were two wines whose alcohol levels were higher than I happen to prefer, a couple unruly beasts in an otherwise well controlled herd.
So while it is deeply reassuring and delightful that Nigl can still do this, I’d be even more delighted if they did it all the time. (“They” because it’s two generations now.) I am aware I have little if any right to counsel them to get a better handle on ripeness management (or some such thing), first because I’m avowedly persnickety about alc., and second because WTF am I anyway? And so we have a few wines as good as wine can be and a couple others that….might have been even better.
We begin, rather to my surprise, with two Pinot Noirs, of which they must be proud, since there’s only space for so many bottles in a case. They grow on primary rock and would seem to benefit from the coolish climate of the Kremstal. Why “seem?” Because both are north of 14% alc, the zone of peril for PN.