Winemaker Notes
Hochrain, a name meaning "high place," is a southeast-facing terraced vineyard in Wösendorf sitting between 200 and 300 meters of elevation. The vineyard consists of an unusually high content of loess, a mineral-laden soil that produces wines that are especially broad and rich.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
This dry riesling beauty is complex, but also so delicious. Ripe through and through, this medium- to full-bodied wine is very concentrated with a staggering freshness that literally takes your breath away. The wet stone minerality builds and builds at the spectacular finish that is also very juicy.
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Vinous
The 2022 Riesling Hochrain Smaragd sports a smoother, gentler vibe. Despite its linearity, there is a guiding light of stone fruit juiciness. It is slightly more generous and more emollient in style, but it shows great precision. Taut, juicy and bright, it evokes greengage framed by lemon.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
This complex, broad white simmers with smoke, warm lentil and fleshy apricot flavors underscored by a powerful mineral bedrock. Chalky and rich in feel, offering dried thyme, sage and celery seed on the salty, leesy palate. Shows power and structural integrity, with singed orange peel acidity driving the energetic, long finish.
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Wine Spectator
This complex, broad white simmers with smoke, warm lentil and fleshy apricot flavors underscored by a powerful mineral bedrock. Chalky and rich in feel, offering dried thyme, sage and celery seed on the salty, leesy palate. Shows power and structural integrity, with singed orange peel acidity driving the energetic, long finish.
Riesling possesses a remarkable ability to reflect the character of wherever it is grown while still maintaining its identity. A regal variety of incredible purity and precision, this versatile grape can be just as enjoyable dry or sweet, young or old, still or sparkling and can age longer than nearly any other white variety. Somm Secret—Given how difficult it is to discern the level of sweetness in a Riesling from the label, here are some clues to find the dry ones. First, look for the world “trocken.” (“Halbtrocken” or “feinherb” mean off-dry.) Also a higher abv usually indicates a drier Riesling.
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.