Winemaker Notes
One of the most extraordinary sites in Wachau. This wine impresses with mineral character, finesse, and outstanding ageing potential.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Intense aroma of fresh green beans and garden peas with notes of white and green pepper. Powerful and muscular, with a firm structure and crisp acidity for a gruner veltliner of this level. Stony, quite austere finish.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Clear, fresh and with cool, spicy aromatics on the nose, the 2021 Ried Achleiten Grüner Veltliner Smaragd is juicy and elegant on the palate with hints of iodine. With a compact and persistent structure and fine, crystalline acidity, this is an intensely juicy and aromatic Veltliner with a salty, spicy, extremely stimulating finish.
Rating:93+ -
Wine Spectator
Vibrant and lively, this shows generous salty agave character surrounding ripe, spicy citrus, lush tropical fruit and earth. Reveals electrifying acidity that powers through the density and creaminess on the palate, making for a sublime Grüner that will unfurl and develop with time.
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Wine & Spirits
One panelist called out the ginger and wasabi notes in this warm, savory white. Another liked the texture, appreciating the subtlety of the fruit. This needs a chill to tame the alcohol; try it with sushi.
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.