Riesling-like white peach and lime are joined by snap pea, honeydew melon and golden beets for a lusciously ripe yet brightly juicy, crunchy , intriguingly earthy performance on a silken palate. Incisively peppery, alkaline and shimmeringly stony impingements serve for stimulating and fascinating counterpoint on a vibrantly sustained finish strikingly transparent to cooling green herbal accents as well as bittersweet, iris-like inner-mouth perfume. -- David Schildknecht

From a vineyard planted in 1938, the 2016 Ried Achleiten Grüner Veltliner Smaragd Stockkultur has an intense citrus color and opens with a deep, dense and smoky bouquet of perfectly ripe and concentrated fruits that show a tropical touch along with flinty-mineral flavors of crushed crystalline rocks in the background. Full-bodied, lush and highly elegant on the palate, this is a rich, complex, salty, perfectly balanced and powerful but stimulatingly fresh and piquant Grüner Veltliner. The power of the 13.5% alcohol is well balanced. The finish, with tropical fruit aromas and a nice bitterness, is rich but also pure in its precision and delicate minerality. Tasted in July 2017.