$93.99 on 6+ (code: 6saves5)

98 pts Vinous
The 2023 Grüner Veltliner Smaragd Achleiten Smaragd is from over 80-year-old vines, rooting Gföhler gneiss. An initial flicker of citrus sets an immediate tone of freshness. The palate takes this freshness and adds a beautifully green savor of chervil crushed in cream alongside lime zest and white peppercorns. This is a deeply savory, slender, bright wine with drive and so much energy. Wow. (Bone-dry) - By Anne Krebiehl MW on May 2024

Anne Krebiehl MW (Vinous) on May 2024:
“Exciting” is how Rudi Pichler described 2023. The estate sustained some hail damage in late August in the lowest-lying and highest Riesling parcels; hence, there is no Riesling Federspiel this year. Pichler quickly adds that those further east, in Kamptal, were hit much worse. He said that several theories did the rounds regarding hail-damaged bunches: some insisted that since affected grapes had dried out, they would not make a difference during skin contact, “but we decided to sort them all out completely and painstakingly.” This was only possible by recruiting many more pickers from friends and family and then dealing with all the extra admin this entails in Austria. “We managed it all, and that was a feat,” Pichler says. “It was the right decision.” Harvest started on 3 October and was done by mid-November – and the wines are as linear and taut as ever, even if the fruit flavors are in a riper spectrum.

The Vineyard: The soils in the idyllically situated westerly Achleithen consist of a blend of sandy fine earth with coarse scree and stone, mixed with Gföhler gneiss and migmatitic amphibolite. Of all our vineyard sites, the westerly Achleithen manifests the least limestone content. Great portions of it are even limestone-free, where the pH value of the soil turns out correspondingly lower. In the higher elevation parcels, soils are dominated by Gföhler gneiss, while migmatitic amphibolite prevails in the lower levels. Because of landslides, both types of stone appear in the lower parcels. The typical Gföhler gneiss is a migmatitic orthogneiss, a metamorphic rock that is formed when granite is subjected to extreme conditions of pressure and temperature. The granite itself was formed thanks to a gradual cooling of acidic molten stone some 480 million years in the past. Over the course of the Variscian ontogeny, 350 million years ago, the stone was transformed into so-called migmatitic granite gneiss. The migmatitic amphibolite in the lower vineyard parcels is a metamorphic rock as well, one which underwent a partial melting. The name refers to the high concentration of the alkaline mineral hornblende, the most frequently encountered representative of the amphibolite group.