2013 Riesling Smaragd Kellerberg

Director Roman Horvath and cellarmaster Heinz Frischengruber adeptly manage this huge and prestigious co-op; indeed, their work reveals that that description is no oxymoron. We’ve been here before, though, since the exceptional potential that could be drawn from the vast acreage and nearly 300 members formerly collectively known as the Freie Weingärtner Wachau was illustriously demonstrated under the regime of a then very young cellarmaster, Fritz Miesbauer (now running the Weingut Stadt Krems) in tandem with director Willi Klinger (now head of the Austrian Wine Marketing Board) and later Rainer Wess (now of the eponymous and impressive estate). There were a few disruptive years and weak vintages in between, but with those exceptions this co-operative has been a source of outstanding Wachau value during an era when some might argue that those two words, too, threatened to become oxymoronic.

Certain lots of 2013 Riesling Federspiel were lightly de-acidified (while remaining unusually high in acidity for their genre) but in general Frischengruber felt that the exceptionally high dry extract accumulated in this overall well-watered growing season served, or will ultimately serve, as adequate buffering. Horvath and Frischengruber began in 2013 to permit their Smaragd bottlings 10 or 11 months of élevage and the wisdom of that approach was suggested each time I tasted post-bottling. I never get around to sampling quite all of the many Riesling and Grüner Veltliner bottlings that issue from the Domäne, much less all of their wide-ranging work with diverse alternative grape varieties and their numerous experimental but commercial batches, including wines raised in newer wood or amphora.

Roman Horvath and Heinz Frischengruber have now been at the helm of this co-operative for a full decade. With 450 hectares of vineyards and annual production of three million bottles a year, it represents about one-third of the entire region and makes a wide number of wines that merit serious attention at very attractive prices.

With over a hundred different soil structures, the co-op also has the full palette of potential flavor profiles to offer, but the sheer number of different sites is sometimes difficult to manage. In the steepest sites, for example, a member farmer may spend 1,200 hours in a single hectare of vines from pruning until harvest. In the flatter blocks near the Danube, that figure can fall to as little as 150.

When I asked him about the growing interest in organic wines, Horvath indicated that the Domäne Wachau has implemented sustainable viticulture, but that going organic “would be difficult because the Wachau is monoculture.” While I would like to see the Smaragds with a touch more nerve, Horvath is more worried about physiological ripeness. “We are not worried about the alcohol levels going too high,” he added.