HIRSCH: Ultimate Tension

By Stuart Pigott - last revision: 21.06.26

This is the second in a series of stories about the wines of the Danube Valley and the Valleys of its tributary rivers in Austria. The following stories will each focus on a region, but this story is about a single producer who's extraordinary are not as renowned as they deserve to be.

TRIAL MONTH was extended and extended. This is the LAST STORY for which all the CONTENT IS FREE!

Sure, there are wonderful wines that are just straight up delicious in a sunny day kind of way, and I often enjoy this kind of wine beauty. Let’s face it, we need positive wine experience in order to stay sane in this world that's seething with grievance and hatred.

Joy and pleasure are the right answers to authoritarianism, to the grovelling cronnies of arrogant leaders and the callousness of the AI titans. The simple savouring of beauty is a declaration of independence. So, obviously I am one of the Partisans of Beauty!

However, when it comes to wine - no less than music, movies, art and literature - nothing moves me like tension. In the case of wine it is the tension between intensity and delicacy, light and dark, come-hither and keep-your distance, Apollo and Dionysus, even pain and pleasure.

For me, no dry white wines have this to a higher degree than the Rieslings and Grüner Vetlliners of the Hirsch winery in the Kamptal region of Austria. So, when Johannes Hirsch said he’d be happy to show me all of his single-vineyard wines from the last vintages I jumped at the opportunity.

Here are the results of that mind-expanding tasting. Many of the notes don't read much like conventional wine descriptions, but I see no way to adequately convey how extraordinary these wines are except this one. Regardless whether you doubt me or believe me, I suggest you need to experience these wines directly.

My tasting confirmed how far Johannes Hirsch has come during the last few years. A decade ago he was already one of the top producers of his region, but now he’s one of the leading producers of dry whites on Planet Wine.

If you find these notes confusing, then just look at the alcoholic content on the label. Only one of the Rieslings has 13.5% alcohol, the rest lying at 13% or 12.5%. That’s also true of the Grüner Veltliners, which is even more extraordinary since this grape tends to give wines with higher alcoholic content. This helps gives them all such wonderful delicacy.

NOTE 1: None of this would be possible without the Hirsch family’s long-term commitment to a thoughful and sensitive form of organic (certified biodynamic since 2007) viticulture. Johannes’s father Josef began working with organic compost back in 1979, decades before this was considered cool. Long-term soil health is as important a factor in this equation as precise canopy management is.

NOTE 2: The Hirsch wines have a reputation for being extremely flinty (technical term:reduction), but from 2018 a set significant changes in vinification techniques reduced the intensity of this and it no longer sticks out even in the very young wines.

14 Grüner Veltliners tasted, including one with 99 and two with 98. 

10 Rieslings tasted, including one with 100 and two with 99.  

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TRIAL MONTH was extended and extended. This is the LAST STORY for which all the CONTENT IS FREE!

2025 GRÜNER VELTLINER 

Hirsch  Kamptal  Grüner Veltliner  Hirschvergnügen  2025 - 11.5% / Very cool with an exciting interplay of herbal freshness and leesy complexity. An excellent example of the light wine catgeory with very crisp green apple acidity driving the zesty and tantalizing finish. 91 (SP)

Hirsch  Kamptal  Grüner Veltliner  Kammern  2025 - 12% / I love the silky texture of this youthfull Grüner Veltliner that has so much positively green fruit. Surprising length and elegance for a village wine. Just a hint of pepper. 93 (SP)

2024 GRÜNER VELTLINER 

Hirsch  Kamptal  Grüner Veltliner  Ried Renner 1ÖTW  2024 - 13% / Not just an aroma of summer meadows, rather an entire summer meadow is packed into this deep and subtle Grüner Veltliner. The cool Reine claude and Mirabelle plum flavours gently embrace you. A whole that can’t be fully understood by disecting the elements, only by losing yourself in its subtle tapestry of colours. 96 (SP)

Hirsch  Kamptal  Grüner Veltliner  Ried Grub 1ÖTW  2024 - 13% /  Fundamentally herbal with a wonderful tension, this has an energy that's sadly often lacking in high-end Grüner Veltliners. Still quite tightly-wound at the long dynamic finish. Needs some time to fully unfurl its long banner in the wind. Crisp and invigorating finish. 95 (SP)

Hirsch  Kamptal  Grüner Veltliner  Ried Gaisberg 1ÖTW  2024 - 13% /  In spite of the terrific concentration and excellent ripeness, this astonishing Grüner Veltliner is sleek, delicate and almost weightless! Wet-stone and citrus zest freshness cascade over you at the super-elegant finish. 97 (SP)

Hirsch  Kamptal  Grüner Veltliner  Ried Lamm 1ÖTW  2024 - 13.5% / No bergamot ripens in this legendary vineyard site, but when you taste this wines it seems that it must! Also notes of summer meadows and dried sage. Fantastic depth and concentration, yet this beauty seems to skate on thin ice, rather than stand on massive foundations (which is often the case for Grüner Veltliners from here). Very long, delicate finish. 97 (SP)

2023 GRÜNER VELTLINER 

Hirsch  Kamptal  Grüner Veltliner  Ried Renner 1ÖTW  2023 - 13% /  Ripe and delicate, cool and ever so slightly luscious, this fantastic grüner Veltliner effortlessly marries contradictory elements. And as it does so, it glides over the palate like nothing else I can remember. Long, structured, yet silky finish. 95 (SP)

Hirsch  Kamptal  Grüner Veltliner  Ried Grub 1ÖTW  2023 - 13% / A super-elegant Grüner Veltliner with terrific herbal and mineral freshness that leaps and dances through our world of absurdity with a joyful enegery that makes you glad to be alive! Dangerously fresh and green at the radically dynamic finish! 96 (SP)

Hirsch  Kamptal  Grüner Veltliner  Ried Gaisberg 1ÖTW  2023 - 13% / Fantastic concentration and ripeness for a Grüner Veltliner with only 13% alcohol, something that seemed impossible until I tasted this beauty! Very cool, silky and zesty all at once, this has enormous vitality. One great cleansing wave washes over you at the finish and suddenly you find that you’ve arrived back home. 99 (SP)

Hirsch  Kamptal  Grüner Veltliner  Ried Lamm 1ÖTW  2023 - 13% / Pick up this seemingly small weight and with it in your hand fall in the direction of the centre of the earth. In spite of the wine's density it seems to float in the glass, and even to laugh about gravity as it curls its tendrils around you. Then, suddenly there's a whiff of lemon curd at the enveloping finish! 98 (SP)

2022 GRÜNER VELTLINER 

Hirsch  Kamptal  Grüner Veltliner  Ried Renner 1ÖTW  2022 - 13% / Spring and summer meet in the glass, the grass, herbs and flowers, the sun and the rain. And, together they send you on a journey though cool and warm places that finally delivers you to somewhere calm and delightful where you finally understand. 96 (SP)

Hirsch  Kamptal  Grüner Veltliner  Ried Grub 1ÖTW  2022 - 13% / If you ever wanted to know what crisp means, then grab this wine, pull the blinds and descend into this sensual crispness! Somehow that which is pleasently green instinctively turns in a warmer direction. Challenging minerality in the best sense of these words. Very vibrant finish. 95 (SP)

Hirsch  Kamptal  Grüner Veltliner  Ried Gaisberg 1ÖTW  2022 - 13% / Deep, delicately ripe and dangerously fresh, indeed, at the finish this has an almost savage beauty. For a high-end Grüner Veltliner an almost absurd amount of energy, the finish whiplashing you out of the work-a-day world into another dimension! 97 (SP)  

Hirsch  Kamptal  Grüner Veltliner  Ried Lamm 1ÖTW  2022 - 13% / How can it be that this cool and wet vintage yielded a wine with this richness and grandeur? In the great wave of flavour rolls over you are the deep bass notes of J.S. Bach’s Tocatta & Fugue in D minor! - then you lean back as the waters recede and feel happiness like no money can buy. 98 (SP)

2025 RIESLING

Hirsch  Kamptal  Riesling  Zöbing  2025 - 12% / A stunning introduction to the dry Rieslings of the Kamptal region, this has intense minerality and fine stone fruit aromas that are beautifully intertwined on the sleek and focused palate. Still very youthful at the long, stony finish! 94 (SP)

2024 RIESLING

Hirsch  Kamptal  Riesling  Heiligenstein 1ÖTW  2024 - 12.5% / The cool side of the peach with a strip of lime zest splashed by the spray of a waterfall. Totally mineraly acidity sweeps you out to sea, then washes you up on a strange shore, the salt clinging to your lips for what feels like half an eternity. 97 (SP)

Hirsch  Kamptal  Riesling  Gaisberg 1ÖTW  2024 - 12.5% / A thousand nunaces hit you all at once and you wonder what this thing is, what’s happening, and even who the hell you are. The mystery of summer meadows; reminiscence and precognition. In spite of the density a feeling of great lightness. Incredibly long and subtle finish that defies conventional description. Redefines what Austrian dry Riesling can be! 99 (SP)

Hirsch  Kamptal  Riesling  Heiligenstein-Rotfels 1ÖTW  2024 - 12.5% /  The hard rock seems to melt into your mouth, yet it only slowly yields up its secrets. The weave of a great kelim carpet that cannot be grasped in a moment, but pulls you ever deeper into its complexity. At once physical and metaphysical, but without dichotomy! 98 (SP)

2023 RIESLING

Hirsch  Kamptal  Riesling  Heiligenstein 1ÖTW  2023 - 13% / As the diamond turns its facets flash, a glittering world of light and water. Fantastic elegance and finesse, but what are those words compared with this experience? Please give me enough of this vitality and colourful delicacy to come through the great storm that has engulfed the world! 97 (SP)

Hirsch  Kamptal  Riesling  Gaisberg 1ÖTW  2023 - 13% / Be careful when you pick up this glass, because once you smell the wine, then the wild herbs it transports from the vineyard to your sense might take over your soul! What an incredibly delicate succulence! How do you get all those things to cohabit in this wine glass? Nature is strong. 98 (SP)

Hirsch  Kamptal  Riesling  Heiligenstein-Rotfels 1ÖTW  2023 - 13.5% /  It feels like I’m smelling the smoke of ancient volcanoes, though the wine doesn’t come from a vineyard with volcanic soil. Stands as tall and majestic as Mont Blanc. Even after long aeration and becoming way too warm in the glass it displays extraordinary vitality. Enormous mineral drive, an entirely new story unfolding at the super-stony finish. Decades of aging potential! 100 (SP)

2022 RIESLING

Hirsch  Kamptal  Riesling  Heiligenstein 1ÖTW  2022 - 13% / Deep under the surface of the soil it’s always cool and that’s where the personality of this wine seems to reside. Lick the wet stone and let it lick your mind. Very dynamic and energetic, yet so centrered. 96 (SP) 

Hirsch  Kamptal  Riesling  Gaisberg 1ÖTW  2022 - 13% / The God of Riesling has been sleeping, but now she has awoken and with Godzilla-like energy rises out of the soil. Run for cover, because the energy of this unruly monster is off-the-scale! 97 (SP)  

Hirsch  Kamptal  Riesling  Heiligenstein-Rotfels 1ÖTW  2022 - 13% / Damn near perfect! How can a wine have this extraordinay finesse when it seems to pull you to the bottom of the Marianus Trench? Just a whiff of toast and a waft of lime. You’re fully aware that more than five thousand fathoms deep far removed the everyday world, yet here you are sitting at this table with a glass of this wine in your hand. Only the second vintage of this wine. 99 (SP)