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 full- bodied wine and is rich in style with notes of stone fruit, lemon, radish, and arugula.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
One of the most extraordinary gruner veltliners of the vintage. Still very young, this great wine has an astonishing purity. At the upper limit of medium-bodied with a staggeringly intense stony minerality that’s beautifully interwoven with the wide spectrum of yellow and green stone fruit aromas. Yes, it has some serious richness on the mid-palate, but even there it is extremely precise, then, at the finish, you descend ever deeper into the crystalline mysteries of the earth.
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Wine Spectator
A polished and concentrated white, simmering with horsepower and mineral energy. Candied elderflower gives this a high-toned feel, then savory spices -- peppercorn, turmeric and celery -- emerge. This is satiny in feel, with great depth to the ripe fruit and persistent 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.