Winemaker Notes
Grüner Veltliner is the signature grape of Austria and produces a dry white wine with savory aromas, spicy flavors, and good acidity. Grüner Veltliner Smaragd from the Wachau is a fullbodied wine and is rich in style with notes of stone fruit, lemon, radish, and arugula.
Grüner Veltliner’s bright acidity and savory character make it an ideal partner to mildly spiced Vietnamese, Thai, and Chinese flavors. Fish and shellfish are accented by Grüner Veltliner’s citrus and mineral profile while its acidity cuts the richness of pork or ham. It can also work well with foods that are difficult to pair such as bitter greens and asparagus.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Very complex nose with everything from exotic fruit and pomelo to white pepper, fresh herbs and spring flowers. Great brilliance and minerality, packed into a remarkably sleek package for this grape and the opulent vintage. Then comes the finish that just doesn't want to let go!
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Wine Spectator
Acidity electrifies this concentrated, unctuous Grüner, filled with ripe peach and cardamom flavors and hints of smoke. The powerful finish features alluring details of cream, sea salt, green tea and Brazil nut shavings.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2017 Ried Achleithen Grüner Veltliner Smaragd is from old vines planted in the rocky southwest part of the cru. Pure, fresh and bright on the flinty, fine and stony nose, this is a rich and powerful, very fine and elegant Achleithen with a long and intense finish.
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.