Winemaker Notes
Fantastic aroma! An utter classic vintage of this, a numinous dialogue between its herbal, racy and limey elements and its physio-sweetness, between the citric pinch and a creamy mid-palate richness.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
A tropical touch of passion fruit plays on the pear-inflected nose of this wine. The concentrated palate, however, is all about lemon freshness and yeasty texture. Soy and miso notions add a salty element while lemon zest and pith notes provide a precise texture. That lemon peel quality dominates with its purity on the long finish. Lovely and compact but very concentrated.
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Wine Spectator
This broad, powerful statement of peach, apple, honeysuckle, lemon and stone aromas and flavors is balanced and intense, with a searing, complex, saline finish. Drink now through 2028.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2016 Ried Steinertal Grüner Veltliner Smaragd has a coolish and flinty flavored nose of perfectly ripe and concentrated white and yellow-fleshed fruits. Full-bodied and juicy on the palate, this Veltliner balances its richness and fruit intensity with finesse, freshness, fine minerals and tannins. The finish is well structured, long, intense and powerful. I'd keep the 2016 for another three or four years before I'd serve it. Tasted in July 2017, one week after the bottling.
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.