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.
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
Still slightly funky from long lees contact. This is an extremely attractive grüner veltliner that's simultaneously creamy and minerally with plenty of lemon-zest freshness and a long, silky finish.
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Wine Spectator
Shows class, with an expressive palate, featuring a complex array of ripe peach, apple, glazed pear and vanilla bean flavors. Delivers ample minerality midpalate, which joins the acidity to create a vibrant backbone. Finely balanced, presenting a long finish of mineral, cream and white chocolate. Best from 2021 through 2030.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2018 Ried Hochrain Grüner Veltliner Smaragd is fine and discreet on the slightly flinty, very elegant and balanced yet still closed nose. On the palate, this is a lush, round and elegant, juicy and fruity Veltliner with fine mineral acidity and a creamy-textured, mouth-filling and finely salty-bitter finish. This is more creamy and yeasty than the Kollmütz. Tasted at the domain in September 2019
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.