Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2013 Grüner Veltliner Smaragd Wachstum Bodenstein is concentrated, deep and intense yet pure on the coolish fresh and flinty nose, with its lemon rind and some greenish notes on the complex bouquet that will open much more with aeration and show more apricot aromas. On the palate, this is an elegant, crystalline and seamlessly textured, very intense and aromatic, dense and juicy Veltliner with a beautifully fresh and elegant finish that displays lemon flavors and reveals a tight mineral structure and remarkable aging potential. Tasted in Weissenkirchen/Wachau in September 2019. Rating: 95+
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Wine Spectator
Seductively smoky and rich, with concentrated flavors of baked pear, apple pastry, lemon verbena and cream that are lashed to a firm frame. Well-evolved, featuring a powerful spiciness that caresses the palate. The minerally finish is long and pure, delivering hints of pepper.
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.