Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
I like the Asian pear and five spice exotic elements here, along with pomelo rind and papaya fruit. White flowers. While youthful this has such aromatic complexity. Full-bodied, textured and coating yet so light-footed, elegant and sleek-feeling.
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Wine Enthusiast
Rich and well crafted, this wine adds notes of kumquat to the peach cobbler, pastry and yellow apple flavors. Chamomile tea and dried savory notes in the midpalate lead to a finish that lingers, with toasty accents.
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Wine Spectator
Flavors of alpine herbs and fresh mint sit atop a ripe and round palate, offering zingy refreshment and vibrancy, while notes of chopped green herbs, lavender and rosemary merge with white peach and orange peel accents. Complex and attractive, with cool mineral elements washing over the finish. Drink now through 2030. 500 cases made, 40 cases imported.
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.