2016 Rudi Pichler Riesling Smaragd Hochrain Wachau Austria 750 ml

An Austrian Stunner

The Wachau, northwest of Vienna, is Austria’s most prized wine region. It consists of sloping and terraced vineyards that quickly ascend out of the banks of the Danube. This is where the Pichler clan has been cultivating vines since the early 1730s, and where Rudi Pichler grew up in a house that his family has owned since 1884. In his youth, he’d wake up to orders to milk the cows, then work until the evening in the wine cellars. Those early days doubtless instilled the work ethic that paved Pichler’s way to Vintner of the Year honors, which he won in 2010 from Austria’s prestigious Falstaff Wine Guide. But they also instilled in him a traditional sense of winemaking.

Pichler refers to himself as a “wine caretaker” instead of a winemaker, and he carefully monitors the property’s 37 acres of vineyards. The 2016 Rudi Pichler Riesling Smaragd Hochrain hails from a vineyard that sits at just under 1000 fee of elevation, and whose name means “high place.” At Hochrain, the 40-year-old vines, which grow in soil that has a high concentration of calcerous silt, put forth wines of depth and power. Pichler havests the fruit by hand, separating healthy fruit from botrytis-affected fruit (which is a standard procedure in the Wachau), then ferments the wines dry to reveal definition and cut. The result is a stunner of a Riesling that James Suckling gave 94 points: a yellow-gold wine with green reflection, that shows tons of asian pear, nectarine, and boasts a broad and resonant palate.