Winemaker Notes
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
This powerful grüner veltliner has plenty of peach and mirabelle character, but it's the complex, spicy and sweet-vegetal aromas that stand in the foreground. Creamy front palate, but with considerable underlying structure. Vibrant and crystalline finish, in spite of the concentration. Drink or hold.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
From terraces with soils up to 65 years old and deep, weathered crystalline rocks (paragneiss) high in minerals, the 2017 Ried Kollmütz Grüner Veltliner Smaragd opens very clear and fine on the deep and crystalline nose. This is a full-bodied and powerful Veltliner with a very elegant and salty, very persistent and structured finish.
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Wine Spectator
This offers a velvety feel, caressing the palate with an elegant and creamy array of lush apricot and vanilla flavors, capped by marzipan accents. Combines power and grace with a medium body and vibrant acidity, ending with a long finish. Drink now through 2028.
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.