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.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
This super-fresh and expressive gruner veltliner has a pronounced cool climate personality in spite of its stunning concentration. So tightly wound and so precise on the remarkably sleek palate. Riesling-like stony minerality at the long crystalline finish. With aeration it develops a beautiful peachiness. Great aging potential!
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Wine Enthusiast
This is a bit reserved today, but it is just waiting to unravel, as there is a great tension between its structure, acidity and floral and fruit elements. It is lighter in style, showing vivacity and complexity, featuring notes of quince and elderflower. Patience will be rewarded with this one.
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Wine Spectator
Delivers a heavenly mix of floral perfume, peach and citrus undercut by seaweed and umami. Very lush and textured, with mineral-edged acidity offsetting the honeyed richness and driving the lengthy, energetic finish. Outstanding, clean and pure.
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.