Winemaker Notes
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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James Suckling
An incredibly delicate and subtle gruner veltliner in spite of the great concentration. Beautifully ripe Reine Claude and Mirabelle plums, also a wealth of garden herb nuances, then a whole Alpine meadow of flowers cascades over you at the very long and filigreed finish. And that’s dangerous, because then you want more of the fabulous fruit and reach for the glass again. Great aging potential. Sustainable. Drink or hold.
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Vinous
The 2023 Grüner Veltliner Wachstum Bodenstein Smaragd was planted in 1997 with a varied selection of old genetics collected across Lower Austria on varying rootstocks. Bodenstein calls this wine his scientific experiment. This is planted in the upper part of the Achleiten, on rocks with very thin topsoil where Grüner struggles, but this is shaded from mid-afternoon onwards. This takes a while to open up, but there is a faint but very fine scent of citrus, almost with a touch of chervil. Again, the palate is rounder than the nose suggests, super-smooth, but with a lovely edge of zestiness, faint but utterly fresh, elongated, stony and graceful. There's quite a bit of power on the finish - beautifully long (Dry)
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Wine Spectator
There’s a lot of wine just beginning to unfurl from this compact frame. Saline-streaked orchard fruit, sun tea and guava hints stay clean and focused thanks to the racy acidity and firming, flinty mineral layer. A sweet, round and rich style, with zesty, earthy undertones and a pungent, herbaceous thread.
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.