I came back to the April Wine Advocate and was delighted to see Bob Parker writing about the many-faced 2003 Bordeaux vintage. Somehow I think we'll all be grappling with 2003, no matter what part of Europe we're discussing. It's a vintage defiant of summary, a vintage like some big bag of M&Ms each one another color.

Austria was as hot and dry as everyplace else in Europe, though irrigation was often helpful and sometimes decisive. The vintage was either very early or at the normal time or very late. Summed it right up didn't I! But this is one of the demarcations of 2003, so I'll rap about it.

A few growers freaked they'd have no acidity, and picked early, in September. In most instances their fruit was sugar-ripe but physiologically unripe; many of the resulting wines taste constricted, antiseptic and incomplete. A few taste very good-especially at Nikolaihof, who claim to have had full ripeness earlier in their biodynamically farmed vineyards than others had in their "conventional" ones. I heard many stories about crews starting at dawn and stopping by eleven, just to bring in the coolest possible fruit. Past experiments with dry-ice weren't repeated. As Heidi Schröck told me; "It hurts if it touches my skin, so why should I let it touch the skins of my grapes?" And even if this is scientifically groundless it is existentially true!

Other growers said don't worry about acidity, pick when ripe. And they did, with typically good results. Others said to wait as long as possible; sugars had built too quickly, and the utmost hang-time was needed to build aromas. The Autumn was normal in temperature and rainfall (though a few places experienced frost on October 24th). In many instances I had trouble with these very-late picked wines: too much body, too much alcohol, too little shape, and oddly, too little true length. Yet a few of them were superb. And all in all, the "victory" went to those who didn't panic and picked at the normal times.

After picking the next demarcation was pressing style. The smartest paid great heed to phenolics. Grapes were drought-stressed, even from irrigated vineyards, and skins were tough. Hiedler, usually a lover of long skin-contact, confined his fruit to a mere 30 minutes. Hirsch says "I was very glad for the whole-cluster pressing this year." Yet a certain phenolic presence was sometimes welcome, as a stand-in for low acids. Again, you don't dare generalize.

Two even more curious phenomena arose in 2003: some wines ended up with more acidity then they began with. I'm not sure how such a thing can happen. And the vintage as a whole seems to have benefited from bottling, which contained its tendency to sprawl. There are - of course! - exceptions, and several growers said they thought this phenomenon would be short-lived.

So how is it? You just had to ask, didn't you? I have never experienced a vintage with a longer spread between average quality and top quality. Thus in a sense how it is depends on which slice of it you happen to carve. It is a very fine Riesling vintage, beyond any doubt. Probably excellent, possibly superb. Just as in Germany, the 2003 Austrian Rieslings taste much cooler than the conditions in which they grew. I count about fifteen masterpieces just in this weensy lil' tranche of Austria, wines as thrilling as any Rieslings I've ever tasted.

Less thrilling are the Pinots, especially Gris, but even some Pinot Blancs toppled beneath their own weight.

It is a fantastic red wine vintage, probably the best-ever. I hedge even to this tiny degree only because one must be wary of over-hyping based on cask-samples of red wines. But I have no doubt it is a sensational vintage, and reason to hope it is a great one.

For Grüner Veltliner the vintage is . . . good. Better than so-so, better than mediocre, not as good as fabulous, but there are more than enough satisfyingly tasty wines. There are few outstanding ones, and even fewer great ones. But neither are there as many truly gnarly ones as in '98 or '96. 2003 was less kind to GrüVe than to Riesling. This is commercially inconvenient, but there you go; dry Riesling is undervalued. In some ways it barely matters what the quality of GrüVe may be at the top end, since y'all tend to buy it at the below - $20 stratum - and those wines are just jiggy in 2003.

When 2003s are good they really sing, they're virile and magnetic and extroverted. When they don't work they tend to be unusually abrupt, without the finishing length typical for Austrian wines. Some of them are merely clunky. And many of them, even some of the good ones, have discernible phenolic bitterness on the finish. Again, this cuts the point very finely - many casual drinkers won't notice - but cutting finely is sorta what we do here. And I was irritated at the many wines that needn't have been bitter when four stinking grams of RS would have cleaned them right up. There's a thin line between purity and perversity and too many Austrians are on the wrong side of it.

Apropos perversity, the final twist in 2003 is yet to come; you simply cannot presume the best wines will come from the "best" names. Anything but. Some of the "best" names disappointed and other names you barely consider actually made spectacular wines. So PLEASE, don't order by rote this year; read the text. Hey, I'll meet you half way: here's my list of top performers in vintage 2003. See how many unlikely names are on it. See how many expected names are not.

BEST OF THE BEST:

• Alzinger
• Schloss Gobelsburg
• Hiedler

PRETTY FRICKIN' GOOD:

• Glatzer (gorgeous reds)
• Schröck
• Berger
• Hirsch

Finally, I ask you to understand this report is my desire to tell you the whole story, even the warty parts. Otherwise everything is gosh-darn beautiful all the time and there's no point reading. You will easily be able to assemble a bunch of wines to satisfy your every wish from 2003. But your list will likely contain new names for you, and I do advise more than the usual care in compiling your order.

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