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
Complex nose of wild herbs, green and white pepper with a pronounced savory note. Medium- to full-bodied with lots of structure and excellent concentration, this powers its way across the palate without any feeling of heaviness. Long, bold finish with plenty of wild herb complexity. A cuvee of seven steep terraced vineyard sites.
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Vinous
The 2022 Grüner Veltliner Smaragd Terrassen is a blend of top sites in Wösendorf and Joching, some sandy, and some on mica schist, with minimal loess. The nose opens with a white miso savoriness blended with fresh green pear flesh. A crushed sage and yeast notion coats the mouth and presents a lovely web of fine, veil-like phenolics, finishing super-savory, salty and peppery.
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Wine Spectator
This broad and nicely plump Gruner shows ripeness and warmth, with a fleshy feel to its lemon balm, roasted agave and citrus flavors, while lemon-lime and salt notes evoke a well-crafted margarita. Turmeric, cardamom and singed green herb accents add detail on the dense palate. This is briny and smoky through the finish. Drink now through 2040. 900 cases made, 112 cases imported.
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.