2018 Prager Wachstum Bodenstein Smaragd Gruner Veltliner Wachau Austria 750 ml

This 2018 from Prager is a stone-cold stunner from one of the most underrated regions on the planet. At half the price of its fellow giants, this "first growth" Grüner Veltliner from the Wachau has it all.

2018 marked a watershed year for Prager's famed single-vineyard specialty, Wachstum Bodenstein. What started as a vintner's experiment 21 years earlier finally came of age in this vintage, showing itself to be a deeply alluring wine. Mouthwatering and tactile, it races from tart and juicy to plump and rich and lands like a Cessna on a salt flat, riding out the tail of its own momentum. 

This offer is an exceedingly rare opportunity to glimpse what Wine Advocate called "one of the greatest Veltliners I have had in my life." He scored it 98 points and went on to rave that it has "a sensual complexity that is unrivaled." For under 60 bucks?! Yeah.

Prager only made around 400 six-packs of this wine. Less than 20% of that made it to the United States. We nabbed every bit we could, but even with our close ties to the winery, that’s not much. This wine is highly sought-after and ridiculously affordable for its world-class quality. It won't last more than a few days.

We highly recommend buying six and holding yourself to a bottle or two a year. That may require a level of self-restraint not found this side of Nirvana, but as crystalline and pure as this wine is right now, with a little bottle age it will evolve into something altogether otherworldly. 

The precision and clarity in Prager's Wachstum Bodenstein shines through a lens of green apple and freshly picked sugar snap pea, quarry dust and flint chips, white flowers and yellow grapefruit all laced together in perfect tension. It's a tenacious wine. As soon as you think you've got it pegged, it grabs you from a new angle or a yet deeper layer. 

Winemaker Toni Bodenstein's motto is "from rock to wine." And that's no empty slogan. Minerality and finesse define the brand. Prager's vineyards range in composition from loose gravelly soil to solid stone. The vertiginous hillside terraces are densely planted with vines that must reach dozens of feet into the rock for water, stressing the plants and creating more concentrated, expressive fruit as a result. Wachstum Bodenstein hits a sweet spot between soil extremes—loose on top, and thus workable, but hard and veiny below, enhancing the competition for precious resources—making it the perfect spot for Toni's experiment. 

In 1997, he gathered 110 different Grüner Veltliner clones and planted them together on this little postage stamp in the sky, less than an acre along the towering ridge that overlooks a hairpin turn in the Danube. It was abandoned at the time. Others before him had considered the land too high up the slope, too steep, too difficult to manage, and not worth the effort. But with the passion of a collector, the care of a craftsman, and the inspired fortitude of a visionary, he followed his curiosity undaunted to its logical conclusion.

It turned out to be a stroke of genius. Worked entirely by hand, those varied botanicals in their rugged perch have now situated his pet project as the winery's signature offering. The word wachstum is equivalent to the French cru, or "growth" as it's normally translated into English. Think of it as a claim on the vineyard’s profound potential. Or as a provocation for his fellow Wachau vintners to reach for greatness. 

In any case, after the 2018 vintage, it's clear this wachstum is Bodenstein's mark on Austrian wine, a pure expression of nature and culture working in harmony at the highest echelon of taste.