Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Vinous
The 2023 Grüner Veltliner Smaragd Terrassen is a blend of the five to seven top sites. Yeast and white miso comes imbued with citrus and russet pear peel on the nose. The palate brings on the full savoriness of that yeasty core on a surprisingly light-footed body. This is all texture and fluidity, with deep notions of white miso, juicy russet pear flesh and peel and a salty, peppery savor. The finish tapers back to lemon and has a lasting echo of pepper. The 2023 is slender for a smaragd, yet really concentrated. (Bone-dry)
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James Suckling
Limey and lightly mineral nose showing a hint of oyster shell to the green limey citrus and green peppercorns. Chalky and limey on the textured, light- to medium-bodied palate with a subtle spicy verve looming in the middle. Mealy and nervy at the end with a crisp, mouthwatering finish. Sustainable.
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Wine Enthusiast
Very crunchy and bright, with grapefruit and ripe pear flavors that are piercing in their intensity, this features expressive, spicy notes that carry through to the minerally finish.
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Wine Spectator
Salty and yeasty, with a fruity mellowness to its flavors of verbena and yellow apple. Shows restraint on the chiseled palate, offering notes of warm hay, iodine and briny tang. Shows good length and balance.
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.