2017 F.X. Pichler Veltliner Federspiel Ried Klostersatz Wachau Austria 750 ml

The exhilarating whites wines of F.X. Pichler have achieved the kind of mythical status that only a few others can claim. And while perfection isn’t a term we use lightly, in this case it’s the only measure that holds up. 

Robert Parker likened the quality of F. X. Pichler to Château Latour and Domaine de la Romanée-Conti. Such high praise may seem strange for a wine that's one-twentieth the price of those others. But while Pichler is not as widely known and not anywhere close to as expensive as those heavyweights, it is every bit as important. 

The 2017 F. X. Pichler Ried Klostersatz Federspiel is a wine that will change what you think about wine. Shift your perspective. Establish a benchmark in your senses. And for the first time in recent memory, it's available somewhere this side of a Michelin-starred restaurant. Make no mistake, we're lining our cellars with this jewel.

Master Sommelier Sur Lucero relished every chance he got to pour the Klostersatz Federspiel for guests at The French Laundry. "We had this wine by the glass for a while and I recommended it to almost everyone," he said. "People light up when they try it. It's amazing. When it comes to Austria, this is the wine, the producer, the Grüner to know."

Austrian wines often need an introduction for American drinkers. In fact, it's one of the reasons we're beside ourselves at the prospect of turning so many new palates onto Pichler's unmitigated delights. But once you get past the funny words on the label, everything makes sense. To start, Grüner Veltliner, a white wine grape, is Austria's principal variety, making up about a third of the nation's vines. At its best Grüner is lively, fresh, and bristling with mineral intensity. In Pichler's hands, it becomes an absolute powerhouse of flavor. 

Klostersatz (literally: cloister setting) is the name of the vineyard honoring the two adjacent monasteries that first planted that land to vine. Ried means single vineyard. Federspiel, the other odd word in the wine's name, refers to its alcohol content—a kind of middle ground for the Wachau region, between 11.5% and 12.5%—meant for early but serious consumption. 

The key to this wine lies in its tension: plump with ripe green fruit and yet defined and chiseled, so full of tingling energy it very nearly bubbles on the surface of your tongue. The pleasant pale straw color blinks in and out along the rim, giving way to silvery shards that hint at the mineral edginess of the wine. The nose pops with aromas of lime pith and sugar snap pea that push and pull at your senses. The palate then offers up a smorgasbord of fruit, vegetable and earth, vibrating in a wavelength somewhere between mossy river rock, fiddlehead fern, and tomatillo salsa, with juicier notions of grapefruit and Meyer lemon adding slight curves to its angular features. Finally, it’s got a pure, powerful, and endless focus.

The vines grow in the Loiben basin, a hairpin turn of the Danube River where the land rises from the river bank toward the steep, primitive-rock terraces of their famed Dürnsteiner sites. Riesling is planted high on the exposed ridge while Grüner Veltliner dominates the lower slopes, where the dirt transitions from pure rock to a mixed gravel-and-silt soil called loess, which retains water beautifully, allowing the Grüner to develop the vital freshness that invigorates every sip.

When we realized we'd be landing the Klostersatz Federspiel, we reached out to our friend Paul Greico, founder of Tribeca's Terroir wine bar and a leading authority on German and Austrian wines, to ask what makes this wine so special. "It is a damn matrix of tactile excitement," he said. "To savor this wine is to feel Mother Nature playing hopscotch on your palate." 

Couldn’t have said it better. This vintage will be toe-tapping now through 2024.