2016 will probably go down in the history of Styrian viticulture as a horror year. First, several nights of frost in April decimated a large part of the vines, then massive hail damage in August wiped out much of what little was left. All in all, barely 20% of the usual crop could be harvested.
What was saved, however, was of astonishing quality. Especially the basic wines are often of an unexpected quality, probably also because some of the top vineyards were not bottled separately due to lack of quantity. Thus, some of the usual suspects are missing from this year's list of best wines.
In total, we tasted around 300 wines from Styria this year. As always, you can find the best of them here or as a handy PDF to print. The headings are also links to all the wines tasted.
