Nikolaihof Steiner Riesling Hund Question

Sorry about your head, Ian. But sure you know you can't bang it against the wall every time Trump does or says something that makes you want to.
 
originally posted by mark e:
originally posted by Ian Fitzsimmons:
Unclear is:

- Cellar Tracker entries for the Reserve end in 2002. Did people who post there stop buying the Reserve then, or are they just not hep? Or did Nikolaihof stop making it for a while?

- References elsewhere are erratic: George saw a reference to the Reserve in 2014; Skurnik in the 2014 or '15 catolog showed it in 2012. Does Nikolaihof just make the Reserve in certain years, per George's idea; say, when the grapes ripen more than usual?

- Several commercial sites quote Shildknecht's reviews of the Reserve next to their listing of the plain 'Riesling.' Chicanery or insouciance? Or are they really the same thing, after all?

I also checked Thiese's 2012 and 2015 Austrian catalogs: no mention of the Steiner Hund.

FWIW, the Nikolaihof "sortiment' page presently shows no SH Reserve wines (but perhaps they are sold out).
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I think this excerpt from Terry's 2014 catalog is interesting for the quick notes:

steinerhundoffering.png
I've always seen the wine offered as "Reserve" but I would slightly disagree with Kirk about their reserve being in any way equivalent to smaragd. The site, along with Nikolaihof's methods, always produces a wine that is unlike any other in the region; generally it is lower in alcohol than most smaragds. The only other - in the Wachau proper - that is always different is Prager's Wachstum Bodenstein. I've tasted with Nikolaihof starting in the late 80s, and have tasted many older wines, too, but I'm not terribly concerned with the label designation. Of all estates, Nikolaihof could never be accused of chicanery.
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Mark, you have more experience with the wines than I, and perhaps I was mis-remembering or just being imprecise as I was using smaragd as placeholder for time of harvest. I didn't mean to say that the NIk SH wines taste like other folks' smaragd. For what it's worth, I opened a '97 Nik SH Tuesday night and it was marked (by a little oval sticker on the label) "spatlese", as I recall older Knoll Pfaffenbergs (again b/c not technically a Wachau vineyard) also were (also Kabinett), before the law changed to prohibit those German pradikat terms. Sadly, the '97 was pretty thoroughly oxidized. It went down the drain after giving it an hour or two to revive itself.

In any event, Ian, I don't see why a given producer would be expected to produce earlier and later harvest wines from a relatively small plot in every vintage. In unusually clement falls, one might be able to do that, but seems to me that one or the other is likely more typical.

Georg, I look forward to what you hear. I'll be there mid-September and will ask Niki as well.
 
So envoyer just sent out an offer for the 2010 reserve, which was billed as the current release so I asked what they had sold me in june and got this answer:

You bought the NIKOLAIHOF RIES STEIN TROCK 13 back in June


What the hell is this?
 
originally posted by maureen:
Trocken?So envoyer just sent out an offer for the 2010 reserve, which was billed as the current release so I asked what they had sold me in june and got this answer:

You bought the NIKOLAIHOF RIES STEIN TROCK 13 back in June


What the hell is this?
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Sounds like what we speculated before: There might be a regular current release (in this case 2013) and another barrel a bit later (from 2010) as reserve. Not unheard of.
 
Well now the store is claiming same wine, different vintages and that the 2010 was either a late release or der wine still available. But please confirm that both vintages of the "Reserve" have recently been made available by domaine.
 
originally posted by maureen:
Well now the store is claiming same wine, different vintages and that the 2010 was either a late release or der wine still available. But please confirm that both vintages of the "Reserve" have recently been made available by domaine.
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In Terry Theise's 2017 Austria catalog both the 2013 and 2010 are offered, the latter in small quantity:

steiner_hunds.png
I also saw the 2012 offered in the 2015 catalog.
 
Here is the story as told by Niki Saahs:

The wine was called Steiner Hund Spätlese (as it is technically not Wachau and therefore cannot be Smaragd), but customers got confused thinking it was sweet. So they changed to Reserve. Then in 2008 the law changed and Reserve now designates wines with at least 13% alcohol. Niki thinks this made the designation stupid (like all producers we talked to, plus the wine is usually below this level, so they stopped using the term apart from one year (08 or 10, I forgot). He also mentioned that the US catalogue still calls it Reserve.

So in summary there is now just Steiner Hund trocken.

As with many of their other wines, they occasionally release the same wine early and then more after a few years.

Greetings from Austria

Georg
 
Did Niki mention whether he'd changed the target harvest date? I amsumming not, as the '97 (spatlese) I mentioned above had the same 12.5% abv as the '09 (just plain Steiner Hund Riesling, no trocken, no reserve) I am planning to have tomorrow.
 
originally posted by kirk wallace:
Sadly, the '97 was pretty thoroughly oxidized. It went down the drain after giving it an hour or two to revive itself.
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Kirk, I'm a bit surprised by your note. I had the 97 within a couple days of you and I thought it was a perfectly aged Austrian Riesling with absolutely no hint of oxidation and many great years of lovely drinking ahead of it. Of course, there could certainly be a bit of bottle variation with these but I bought these in the secondary (maybe even tertiary) market and I assume you got yours on release? I've also had the 99 not too long ago and thought that it was beautiful. I have assumed (based on these experiences and tasting bottles on release) that these should have an aging curve that's quite similar to that of top Smaragd Rieslings from the Wachau.
 
originally posted by kirk wallace:
Did Niki mention whether he'd changed the target harvest date? I amsumming not, as the '97 (spatlese) I mentioned above had the same 12.5% abv as the '09 (just plain Steiner Hund Riesling, no trocken, no reserve) I am planning to have tomorrow.
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He did not comment specifically, but it sounded like the only things changing were name and label.
 
I did some more virtual window shopping yesterday, and it's interesting to see again that 'reserve' is so widely used, even by very reputable retailers.
 
originally posted by Gene Vilensky:
originally posted by kirk wallace:
Sadly, the '97 was pretty thoroughly oxidized. It went down the drain after giving it an hour or two to revive itself.
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Kirk, I'm a bit surprised by your note. I had the 97 within a couple days of you and I thought it was a perfectly aged Austrian Riesling with absolutely no hint of oxidation and many great years of lovely drinking ahead of it. Of course, there could certainly be a bit of bottle variation with these but I bought these in the secondary (maybe even tertiary) market and I assume you got yours on release? I've also had the 99 not too long ago and thought that it was beautiful. I have assumed (based on these experiences and tasting bottles on release) that these should have an aging curve that's quite similar to that of top Smaragd Rieslings from the Wachau.
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and i'm a bit surprised by your comments. to find bottle variation, up to and including premature oxidation in a 20 year old wine is anything but surprising. while premature oxidation is most often discussed in the world of white burgundy, it is in no way limited to that realm.
 
Gene, I was certainly surprised by and unhappy with my '97. (And yes, you are right that I bought it on release and stored it well since then.) You and I have had many bottles of Nik older than this one with rare oxidized disappointments. So, I marked it up (hoped?) to bottle variation. I'll report back re other bottles, assuming we don't open them together.
 
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