Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
A touch of yeast and sage emerges amidst lime peel scents on the nose of this wine. The palate reinforces those flavors, while white pepper and lime notes tingle around the edges. It's lean but concnetrated and finishes with such a clean and refreshing zip that you just want to sip more.
Best Buy -
Wine & Spirits
This packs far more flavor than you’d expect at the price, with an almost oily concentration to its lemony fruit. It’s the notes of stone, herbs and bitter greens that make it interesting, lifting the wine, giving it a refreshing alpine feel.
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.
The region of considerable geologic diversity and microclimates, Kremstal extends virtually without border east from Wachau along the Danube River. Its magnificent terraced and rocky vineyards in the west alongside Wachau include some of Austria’s most esteemed Riesling vineyards, the (Steiner) Hund and Pfaffenberg, as well as Kögl and Wachtberg nearer to the city of Krems. After Krems, the vineyards become excessively steep upstream around Senftenberg where Riesling and Grüner Veltliner thrive. Grüner Veltliner does best from here east where the soils become a mix of sand, gravel and loess.
Grüner Veltliner and Riesling together comprise two thirds of all of the Kremstal vineyards; the region itself represents about five percent of Austria’s total vineyard area.