Winemaker Notes
Smaragd is the top category for Wachau wines. Achleiten is a legendary vineyard in the Wachau region, famous for wines with inimitable mineral character. Bright golden yellow with golden green highlights. The nose is pronounced with floral notes, white peach, quince and fresh herbs, white pepper and salty minerality. The body is juicy and concentrated. The delicate density and the subtle exotic notes are well balanced by its refreshing acidity, tantalizing vibrancy, and a long mineral driven finish.
Grüner Veltliner Achleiten is counted among the most age-worthy wines of the Wachau region. Perfect with roasts, small game and quail as well as matured cheese. Serve well chilled.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Crushed stones, lemongrass, Amalfi lemon and white pepper aromas to this striking clear and fresh Smaragd gruner. Full-bodied but not at all heavy, with sleek mineral and zesty layers and a long, precise finish. Drink or hold.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Dressed in intense white gold, the Weissenkirchen 2022 Ried Achleiten Grüner Veltliner Smaragd shows an intense, concentrated, complex and finely spiced nose with light phenolic notes. It is dense and powerful on the palate as well as salty and savory, with palatable tannins and an aromatic finish that is still quite hard and astringent.
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Wine Enthusiast
This is floral and medium to full bodied, with a soft and pleasant mouthfeel. It is well structured, with midpalate dominated by Bosc pear and white pepper. Shows great harmony, with a soft, silky texture and excellent focus and precision.
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Wine Spectator
Savory and ripe, this shows nice weight to the yellow plum, melon and agave flavors, with succulent acidity keeping pace. Delivers dried hay and acacia notes on the plush, waxy palate, with a veil of salt and smoke. Drinking beautifully now, this has room to grow. Drink now through 2028. 1,000 cases made, 84 cases imported.
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.