Winemaker Notes
Bright straw yellow. Subtle and playful on the nose with aromas of white pepper, some tobacco and exotic fruit, mango and pineapple. The refreshing acidity pairs with the powerful, elegant body and a medium alcohol level. Spicy white pepper and a hint of fresh herbs on the palate with a long finish.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Spectator
Voluptuous and richly spiced, with some honeyed notes to the ripe apple, pear tart and glazed apricot flavors. Shows seductive smokiness midpalate, presenting a pastry-accented finish.
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Wine Enthusiast
A rich wine that shows ripe intensity as well as forward fruitiness. It has a ripe, creamy texture, and hints of spice and vanilla along with a steely acidity. Full in the mouth, it’s packed with pepper as well as fruit. This is a dense wine that could age another year.
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.