Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The intensely golden, almost bronze-colored 2006 Ried Im Weingebirge Grüner Veltliner Smaragd reveals a matured character and represents a fully sunny vintage with its stewed stone fruit, pancake and caramel aromas intertwined with a deep, intense and coolish, flinty-mineral touch. Round and delicate on the palate, this is a full-bodied, intense and elegant, remarkably playful Veltliner with a long, saline and savory finish. The cork is not of the best quality and it tore in two when it was pulled out carelessly—and without resistance. A second bottle had the better cork and a more vibrant yellow-golden color. The fruit is intense yet also vital and fresh on the nose, offering ripe (and not stewed) fruit aromas intertwined with coolish herbal and flinty-mineral as well as citric notes. Elegant and slightly nutty on the palate, this is a vivacious, saline and finely grippy Veltliner with a long, intense and refined yet persistent and tensioned, slightly bitter finish. 13.5% stated alcohol.
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.