Peter Veyder-Malberg is a former advertising art director who has become one of Austria’s most respected winemakers through sheer conviction (and years of manual labor). His estate in the Wachau, founded in 2008, covers four hectares of impossibly steep terraced vineyards across more than twenty parcels. He dry-farms organically and by hand, producing fewer than a thousand cases a year, and has opted out of the Wachau Codex classification to focus on single-vineyard expression.

Buschenberg sits east of the renowned Ried Klaus in Weissenkirchen and has long been one of the Wachau’s hidden treasures. Multiple growers share this steep, tractor-inaccessible terrain, but few had ever bottled it on its own before Peter. The primary rock soils have low growth potential, which is exactly what riesling craves. The vines, planted from 1979 onward, dig deep and produce strikingly mineral wines with serious aging capacity. The vineyard receives early shade and direct morning sunlight, lending the wines a particular freshness and charm.

The 2023 Buschenberg is powerful and tightly wound, with a kind of mineral intensity that has drawn comparisons to volcanic island whites. Ripe citrus and stone fruit sit alongside herbal, almost oceanic notes. The acidity is bracing and precise. This is built for the long haul but already deeply compelling.