When I first tasted this wine at the Nikolaihof estate, my notes indicated that the wine is “very, very nice, if not too, too expensive, BUY!” The single vineyard Im Weingebirge means, in old German, “in the Wine Mountain,” and has been mentioned in poetry since 511 A.D. Its 2006 Smaragd was bottled this year after spending a year and a half in cask, “because the wine needs a lot of time,” said winemaker, Nikolaus Saahs. It is crystalline pure in its aroma, and on the palate, it is bold, with macerated peaches and apricots dominating along lemon curd and butter cookie, and some fine quartz-like minerality and firmness. And the length – it goes on forever. Turns out this wine is on the high-end side, but it would do the Austrian wine department a disservice to leave it out. It is drinking fantastically now, rivaling a top-end white Burgundy, and would last in your cellar for a decade or two. 100% biodynamic.
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