Winemaker Notes
Prager’s stylistic signature is that of aromatic complexity coupled with power and tension. High-density planting and long hang times ensure ripe fruit flavors and concentration yet allowing leaves to shade the fruit lend vibrant aromatics of grasses, herbs, and wildflowers. Minerality is a constant feature of any Prager wine.
With minimum alcohol of 12.5%, Grüner Veltliner Smaragd is a robust and full-bodied dry white wine. Its intensity of flavor and ripeness of fruit make it ideal with high-integrity ingredients such as seared white fish or sautéed spring vegetables. Grüner Veltliner is a classic accompaniment to Wiener Schnitzel.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
From vines planted in 1997 with 110 different genetics on only 0.3 hectares at 380 meters in altitude, the 2018 Grüner Veltliner Smaragd Wachstum Bodenstein is incredibly clear, fine, fresh and pure on the flinty and delicately fruity nose that is so coolish and fine in its notes of crushed crystalline gneiss rocks and delivers fascinating precision, finesse and mineral freshness! On the palate, this is a rich and juicy, very fine and elegant but also crystalline Veltliner with great purity, lingering salinity and aromatic, well-structured length. This is exciting and one of the greatest Veltliners I have had in my life. It's not only the terroir that is speaking here but also the genetic variety that gives a sensual complexity that is unrivaled—a result of the whole-bunch pressing and the aging in the less until April 2019 to add the extract that didn't come from the maceration. Tasted two times at the domain in September 2019.
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Wine & Spirits
This starts out feeling ample in body, with notes of honey and guava, then channels its flavors toward earthier tones of gravel, lime pith and peppery spice. It finishes firm, with the structure to age well.
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.