2024 Wachau and Lower Austria: Calamities and Coups de Coeur

BY ANNE KREBIEHL, MW | JUNE 12, 2025

Frost, hail, heat and high water —nature threw everything at winegrowers in Lower Austria in 2024. More than one grower used the term “catastrophe” to describe the huge effort it took to bring home healthy grapes. A warm March meant some of the earliest budbursts ever, making vines vulnerable to late spring frosts in April. Heat and drought posed a challenge in summer, while torrential rains in mid-September not only caused widespread flooding but also collapsed drystone walls and caused wide cracks on unsealed roads. Some estates had dramatically low yields, some were lucky to escape relatively unscathed, but all were worried about what the rain would do to their fruit. Quality is thus more mixed in 2024, yet there are plenty of highlights and coups de coeur nonetheless.

Sunshine breaking through the clouds in the Wagram.

Jack Frost

April was indeed the cruelest month in Austria. Assessing the frost damage, an agricultural insurance company offered this summary of the year’s events: “After a very warm January, the warmest February and hottest March in Austria’s 257-year history of weather data, as well as the earliest 30°C day of the year on 7 April, an extreme cool-down followed. The advance of cold air, combined with vegetation on average three weeks ahead of the seasonal norm, caused much damage to fruit and viticulture.” Following forecasts, many growers lit frost candles. This was effective for some but less so for others, especially as the frost occurred in sites that are not typically vulnerable. Jack Frost arrived in two waves, hitting estates unevenly. Michael Malat, in Palt, Kremstal, lost 40% of his crop to frost, while Geyerhof, only minutes away but lying slightly higher, only had three vine rows with some frost damage. In Traisental, Markus Huber, escaped the frost completely, as did Viennese winemakers, but the latter suffered hail in July and August.

In the Wachau, the frost affected areas around Rossatz and Arnsdorf (both on the right bank of the Danube) and the Spitzer Graben worst, as well as Weissenkirchen. Situated in Elsarn, up in the Spitzer Graben, Melanie and Martin Muthenthaler lost 70% of their yield. Franz Hitzberger Jr., in Spitz, where the Spitzer Graben opens towards the Danube, did not have any “significant” frost damage, but he noted that they “put up a fight,” lighting almost 3,000 frost candles. The Bodensteins, at Weingut Prager in Weissenkirchen, lost half of their Steinriegl fruit, despite frost candles and the site’s modest elevation.

High up in Senftenberg, on the river Krems in Kremstal, Patrick Proidl lost 40% of his fruit to frost. On the Wagram/Kamptal border at the Bernhard Ott estate, frost-fighting teams were on call each of the chilly nights, lighting and extinguishing candles, but with temperatures dipping down to -6°C just before sunrise, no number of candles could save the entire crop. Ott reported losses of 25-30%. Kamptal, after 2023’s horrendous hail damage, was hit hard by frost. Johannes Hirsch said it was the worst frost in the area since 1961, resulting in tiny yields when “the frost burnt a swath from the valley up the mountainside.” At Bründlmayer, also in the Kamptal, frost took 20% of the fruit.

Despite a challenging 2024 with much frost damage, Melanie Muthenthaler has much to smile about. The wines are stunning.

Green Shoots

Many frost-hit winemakers reported that some vines sprouted again, producing second shoots, but as Franz Josef Gritsch (at the Mauritiushof in Spitz, Wachau) explained, while second-shoot Grüner Veltliner puts out some fruit, Riesling rarely does. Dr Herwig Jamek, of the eponymous estate in Joching, Wachau, noted that the replacement shoots “usually have far more foliage than fruit,” conceding that at least something is better than nothing. Others, like Michael Moosbrugger at Schloss Gobelsburg and Alwin Jurtschitsch, both in Kamptal, experimented with late pruning. This way, vines are not pruned until May, and thus, the unpruned shoots start bursting buds from the top down.  Once all danger of frost has passed, these shoots are pruned back, allowing the basal shoots can emerge later. Moosbrugger achieved a “normal” Grüner Veltliner yield in Ried Lamm using this method.

First Disease Pressure, then Record Heat

Another feature of 2024 was abundant moisture in May and June. I had a taste of this while travelling in May 2024 through exquisitely verdant landscapes and narrowly avoiding a mudslide high in the Kremstal, where the usually peaceful river Krems turned into a fierce torrent and various cellars had to be pumped out after flooding. But the weather turned, with heat and dryness taking over in July and August. Fred Loimer, in Kamptal, explained that ripeness went into overdrive for Grüner Veltliner while Riesling slowed down, as Riesling stops metabolizing under the combination of heat and dry stress and thus does not accumulate sugars in the grapes. Alwin Jurtschitsch  noted that for him, the most decisive factors in Kamptal were summer heat and five weeks of dryness over August and early September. In the Wachau, Heinz Frischengriber, cellarmaster at Domäne Wachau, pointed out that “the hot nights” in July and August were a new development, while both Gritsch and Bodenstein noted dry stress in some sites. Official records state more starkly than the winegrowers themselves what a record year 2024 was: “Overall, 2024 turned out to be by far the warmest year in Austria since records began,” according to Geosphere Austria’s Annual Report, citing 257 years of lowland data and 173 years of high-altitude data. The report also notes a record 42 days reaching 30°C and above in Lower Austria.

A formidable father-and-daughter team,a Theresa and Rudi Pichler.

Torrential Rain

September presented winegrowers with yet another record. The torrential rains that fell between 12 and 16 September 2024 led to more than 80 local weather stations tallying new record highs for September rainfall. September 2024 was officially noted as the wettest September ever. The Austrian Federal Ministry for Agriculture reported record levels of 300-400 mm of rain within five days between Mostviertel and Waldviertel, i.e., the wine regions of Lower Austria. In Austria, rainfall is measured in both millimeters and liters; here, one liter of rain per square meter of ground is equivalent to 1 mm of rain per square meter of ground—400 liters thus equals 400 mm of rain. Strong flood defenses along the Danube, constructed following the devastating floods of 2002 and 2013, mitigated what could have been disastrous floods, but the rain caused many smaller rivers to burst their banks and flood surrounding areas. On the hillsides, the rain collapsed many of the weaker or older drystone walls that are such a feature of the terraced vineyards, sometimes taking rows of vines with them. Many unsealed roads cracked.

The timing of the rain posed huge challenges for the growers. The hot summer meant advanced sugar ripeness, but heavy rain prevented growers from picking. Rain hitting ripe grapes holds the risk of split berries that are then vulnerable to all sorts of rot. Many growers had begun picking before the rains, wanting to get their fruit safely into the cellar, so some entry-level wines are less concentrated and persistent, as phenolic ripeness trailed sugar ripeness. A handful of other producers waited for the rains to conclude or picked their best sites only after the rain—these are some of the best wines in this report. 

But there are further factors. Waterlogged soils meant that rain had to drain away before vineyards could be accessed safely without damaging soils or endangering tractor drivers on slopes. Even more importantly, rain balanced some of the concentration inside the grapes, even though there was disease pressure. Many reported that Grüner Veltliner’s thick skins made it resilient in the face of these conditions. Maria Meier, at the Geyerhof in Kremstal, emphasized that the rain had a positive effect on their fruit: “We realized there was again more acidity, more aroma. The day-night [temperature] amplitude was better, and the rain also reduced the sugar concentration in the grapes, resulting in moderate alcohols,” Meier said. Riesling, with thinner skins and later ripening, found it more difficult to withstand the rain, and several growers noted that some botrytis developed. Many cited the dramatic post-rain cooldown as a saving grace, stopping much rot in its tracks. Others, like Patrick Proidl in Senftenberg, Kremstal, where there was more rain throughout the year, said that the rain made rot “spread like wildfire.” Winemakers known for their late-harvest styles, like Franz Hirtzberger Jr. in Spitz stated that Riesling was affected by rot: “We snipped and selected, selected, selected. We were finished before the end of October, which is early for us.”

The verdant, terraced vineyards of the upper Kremstal in the afternoon sunshine.

Lady Luck

In 2024, luck played a huge role. Luck decided whether you were hit by frosts that, for some reason, did not stick to the usual frost pockets and paths, whether your vineyards were on soils that could hold water in the dry months, whether, during the rain, your vineyards or cellars flooded, whether any of your stone walls broke, whether the skins of your Riesling split. Whether you were lucky or not, 2024 was a year of very hard work in the vineyards. All the wines I tasted for this report are superbly clean, which is almost always the case in Austria. Some of the regional and village wines are a little hollow, lack their usual concentration, and are shorter than usual. This is not due to dilution from rain, but rather to heat and dry stress that occurred before the rain. The best wines, however, have concentration, verve, personality, length and longevity. They are the coups de coeur. I’ve included more commentary about individual estates alongside their respective tasting notes. And on another matter entirely, I have to stress that those who think that Smaragd wines from the Wachau are fat, opulent, ungainly or too alcoholic simply need to revisit what Smaragd means today. These wines are amongst the best Austria has to offer. Pictures of elegance. 

I tasted these wines at estate visits in late April and early May 2025.

© 2025, Vinous. No portion of this article may be copied, shared or re-distributed without prior consent from Vinous. Doing so is not only a violation of our copyright, but also threatens the survival of independent wine criticism.

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