2016 Weingut Prager Riesling Smaragd Wachstum Bodenstein Wachau Austria 750 ml

The Wachau’s Highest Elevation Riesling

Ask anyone about the top producers in the Wachau, and you’ll hear the two Ps: Pichler, of course, and Prager. The man at the helm at Prager, Toni Bodenstein, married into the Prager family and has since become a steward of the family’s legacy. He employs a meticulous blend of tradition and innovation to uncover the deeply held secrets of the Wachau soil. And if his motto “Vom Stein zum Wein” (“from rock to wine”) doesn’t perfectly express the soul of Riesling, then nothing does.

Bodenstein brings his tremendous learning to bear on Prager’s famous Rieslings, which vividly capture a sense of place. Vinous has credited him for “elevat(ing) the stature of his father-in-law Franz Prager’s estate to international notoriety with wines that consistently continue to be among the most complex, intriguing and subtle of any of the world’s Rieslings.”

The 2016 Prager Riesling Smaragd Wachstum Bodenstein comes from the highest altitude Riesling plot in the Wachau: two-acres bordering a forest on the upper terraces of the Hinter Seiber vineyard that Toni Bodenstein planted with 25 clones of Riesling as a preservation of biodiversity. Now the wine from the paragneiss soils of Wachstrum Bodenstein (which means Bodenstain’s Cru) is not just one of the most sought-after wines in the Prager portfolio, but in Austria.