Winemaker Notes
The wine is medium yellow-green with golden reflections. The nose offers clear expressions of dark smoky spices, stone fruit, some pineapple, wild herbs and yellow apple. The palate is distinctive and powerfully structured. This wine is truly enjoyable because of its crisp acidity; and multilayered, long-lasting, salty minerality.
The wine is a pleasure to drink now, but also promises to age
well for many years. The wine perfectly accompanies hearty fish dishes, traditional Austrian cuisine and spicy Thai curry.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
Pristine, aromatic Mandarin notes color the underlying notions of green and yellow pear in this wine. The palate has that same aromatic Mandarin ripeness, along with textured, concentrated yeast flavors that shimmer with soy saltiness on the palate. The body is taut and streamlined; it promises to be very long-lived. Citrus aromas tingle long into the finish.Drink 2019–2030.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2016 Ried Kellerberg Grüner Veltliner Smaragd is clear, fresh and aromatic on the nose, provided with tropical as well as flinty-mineral aromas. Pure, piquant and salty on the palate, this is a well structured and terroir-driven Kellerberg that is a bit more juicy and tannic than the corresponding Riesling. The lingering salinity is really stimulating. However, I would cellar this Grüner Veltliner for another 8-10 years. Tasted as a sample in July 2017.
Barrel Sample: 91-93
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.