Winemaker Notes
Ried Achleiten is known for wines with great uniqueness. A smoky minerality, subtle flinty notes and a very complex structure are typical for Achleiten wines. Grüner Veltliner from this vineyard has a particularly fine herbal spice, as well as delicate stone fruit notes and some exotic aromas. The gneiss soil of the Achleiten supports the firm acidity enormously. The term Smaragd stands for dry, dense, and complex wines of the Wachau; Apart from structure and depth, Smaragd wines also convince with great storage potential.
Well chilled, the wine goes great with veal and poultry like pigeon and quail or with spicy cheeses and strong fish dishes.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
Stony savor swings as a vestige alongside zesty citrus on the closed nose. The palate starts off tight and taut, right now it is all sleek and stony. Time in the glass allows glimpses of what still lies deeply buried: a rich, profound yeastiness reverberating with peppery, salty depth. This is an astonishingly concentrated package that may just be a time capsule that survives us. Drink 2030–2050.
Cellar Selection -
James Suckling
What a lovely, silky and creamy dry white, caressing the palate in such a seductive way. Very delicate herbal notes, a touch of snow pea, then a lot of minerality at the long, filigree finish. Drink or hold.
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Wine & Spirits
Achleiten, a steep, high-altitude site of gneiss and mica-schist, is known for producing austere wines. This one feels like it’s in supreme control, revealing only what it wants to when it wants to—a glimpse of florals, some sandalwood scents; golden-plum fruit, acacia-honey notes. Altogether, however, those notes add up, gathering energy and creating a sense of richness and power without weight. It’s firm, long and packed with potential; give this cellar time.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
From manifold plots from west to east, the 2019 Ried Achleiten Grüner Veltliner Smaragd has a brilliant and intense citrus color and offers a deep, delicately flinty and refreshing bouquet of crushed stones intermingled with lemon oil and juice notes as well as mirabelle aromas. Full-bodied and round, with crystalline acidity and a tight mineral and phenolic structure, this is a dense and complex Achleiten with an intense and still tight but persistent finish. An excellent 2019 to be aged for years.
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Wine Spectator
This white starts out with piercing scents of elderflower, then grapefruit and peach flavors, shaded by legume and earth notes. Powerful and broad, shows some heat on the finish. Drink now through 2025.
Domane Wachau: Craftmanship, terroir and precision.
Craftsmanship, terroir, and precision are the key values of Domäne Wachau under the leadership of Roman Horvath MW and Heinz Frischengruber. Respect for nature and the soil dominates the vignerons' hard work in the steep terraced vineyards. With over 160 hectares of organic vineyards, Domäne Wachau is Austria's leading wine estate with organically cultivated vines.
Organized into small parcels and worked mainly by hand, each vigneron cultivates less than two hectares of vines on average. The families have often passed down the craft over generations, producing a tremendous wealth of knowledge about their vineyards and an uncompromising focus on each individual plot. This is a next generation wine cooperative, as found nowhere else on Earth. Winemaker Heinz Frischengruber knows every parcel personally. The vignerons harvest their terraced vineyards over multiple passes, exclusively by hand. No herbicides or pesticides are used. To the contrary, every effort is made to promote a diversity of flora and fauna, ensuring better ecological balance on the Wachau terraces. Based on these guiding principles, Domäne Wachau is considered a sustainability pioneer for the entire region.
Domäne Wachau wines reflect their grand terroir and deliver an unmistakably puristic style, with both depth and freshness — partly spontaneously fermented and with minimal addition of sulfur. The Wachau offers ideal conditions for origin-driven wines from grand single vineyards such as Achleiten, Bruck, and Kellerberg.
Fun to say and delightfully easy to drink, Grüner Veltliner calls Austria its homeland. While some easily quaffable Grüners come in a one-liter—a convenient size—many high caliber single vineyard bottlings can benefit from cellar aging. Somm Secret—About 75% of the world’s Grüner Veltliner comes from Austria but the variety is gaining ground in other countries, namely Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and the United States.
As Austria’s most prestigious wine growing region, the landscape of the Wachau is—not surprisingly—one of its most dramatic. Millions of years ago, the Danube River chiseled its way through the earth, creating steep terraces of decomposed volcanic and metamorphic rock. Harsh Ice Age winds brought deposits of ancient glacial dust and loess to the terrace’s eastern faces. Today these steep surfaces of nutrient-poor and fast draining soil are home to some of Austria’s very best sites for both Grüner Veltliner and Riesling.
Wachau is small, comprising a mere three percent of Austria’s vine surface and, considering relatively low yields, represents a miniscule proportion of total wine production. Diurnal temperature shifts in Wachau facilitate great balance of sugar and phenolic ripeness in its grapes. At night cold air from the Alps and forests in the northwest displace warm afternoon air, which gets sucked upstream along the Danube.
Its sites are actually so varied and distinct that more emphasis is going into vineyard-designated offerings even despite grape variety. Grüner Veltliner and Riesling are most prominent, but the region produces Chardonnay, Pinot Blanc (Weissburgunder), Pinot Gris, Sauvignon Blanc and Zweigelt among other local variants.