90 Stephan Reinhardt - Robert Parker's Wine Advocate

"The 2018 Grüner Veltliner Hefeabzug opens with a clear, elegant and warm, well-balanced and slightly flinty bouquet of ripe fruits, blossoms and almonds. The attack on the palate is vivacious then round and lush. Bottled with 11.5% alcohol, the 2018 doesn't taste as dry as this wine normally is and reminds me of grape juice but in a more elaborated, refined and mineral way. Tasted from lot 1078719 at the Nikolaihof in September 2019."

"Nikolaus Saahs is very satisfied with the 2018 vintage that saw 100 millimeters of rain the weekend the harvest kicked off. The grapes took the water immediately, so he started harvesting accordingly and was finished by the end of September—earlier than ever before. "2018 was even warmer and drier than 2017," he says, and adds that he thinks "the vines are now used to those extreme conditions." However, the terraces in Krems-Stein on the other side of the Danube River are irrigated but no vineyards in Mautern. The very first 2018s I tasted at this beautiful Demeter estate, the Veltliners Hefeabzug, taste everything but dry, no matter what the analytic figures tell us, and that's most likely due to the low acidity and the malolactic fermentation that all of the Nikolaihof wines undergo, normally during the fermentation and not after it. However, there are great Federspiel Rieslings from 2018, namely the Grüner Veltliner Im Weingebirge and the Riesling Vom Stein. As always, the series includes a wide range of wines, and some of them were aged in large oak casks for several years. Highlights include the 1995 Riesling Smaragd Vom Stein, the 2002 Riesling Vinothek, the 2013 Riesling Im Weingebirge that was pressed with the ancient basket press (Baumpresse), and the 2016 Grüner Veltliner Smaragd Im Weingebirge that has been bottled in summer last year."