Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
-
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2012 Grüner Veltliner Smaragd Wachstum Bodenstein is very clear and intense on the deep, elegant and concentrated but bright and even lemony and flinty nose. Full-bodied, rich and elegant on the palate, this is a very generous and powerful but elegant and still refined Veltliner with a slightly bitter finish that reveals good mineral freshness, structure and tension. A great wine with huge aging potential. Tasted in Weissenkirchen/Wachau in September 2019.
-
Wine Spectator
Firm, with good power and density to the grapefruit, dried pepper, yellow lentil and white pepper flavors. Concentrated lemon curd notes lead to the creamy, well-spiced finish.
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.