The Wines of the Wachau

 

        Robert Bodenstein wants to visit Wrexham. I could hardly believe my ears when I heard this. Here I was in Weissenkirchen, a village in the beautiful Austrian region of Wachau, and a winemaker wanted to see Wrexham. He had opened a special bottle, so I felt I owed him some candour. As a native of the U.K., I said do not go.

I wasn’t in the Wachau to chat about Welcome to Wrexham, of course, but to see Achleiten, a famous vineyard. My enthusiasm stemmed from a masterclass I attended last year in which the presenter remarked that Rieslings from Achleiten could last forty or fifty years. Then I saw a picture of the place: beneath a forest, green rows of vines spread across a long slope and downhill all the way to the Danube. What a sight this was!

        Robert Bodenstein works at Weingut Prager. The winery is on the main road which passes through Weissenkirchen and along the Danube. Being so close to the river, it is protected by a flood wall. This proved to be a blessing in September 2024 when torrential rain hit the Wachau for four days, destroying the cellars at some other estates.

        

I tasted a number of wines from Achleiten at Weingut Prager, all of which were classified as ‘Smaragd’. Such wines are from the Wachau’s top vineyards, must have an abv of at least 12.5% and are the best the region has to offer. Robert Bodenstein told me that he could tell immediately if a wine was from Achleiten. It ‘obviously has this smokiness to it,’ he said.

Prager’s Riesling Smaragd Achleiten 2024 had the Wachau’s characteristic apricot flavour. It also had a shocking amount of acidity – ‘off the scale’, to use my tasting note. Sampling a Grüner Veltliner Smaragd from the same vintage and vineyard was fascinating, for it showed the stark difference in acidity between the two grapes. I also experienced just how good an aged Grüner Veltliner can be when we had a Smaragd from Achleiten from 2011.

Apparently, it wasn’t even a particularly great year. 2021 was ‘the most beautiful vintage this century’, 2014 was ‘horrible’ and 2013 was ‘really beautiful’, but Robert Bodenstein had to consult his phone about 2011.

I wrote at the time that the wine had an ‘amazing nose’, which I felt incapable of describing, so I asked Robert Bodenstein for his opinion. Honeysuckle and chamomile, he suggested. On the palate, the trademark Achleiten smoky note came in after a while. The mouthfeel was soft initially, but then the acidity crept in, lingering on the front of my tongue. As for the finish, it seemed never-ending. It was the best Grüner Veltliner I’ve ever had.

They make another Grüner Veltliner Smaragd from Achleiten called ‘Stockkultur’ at Weingut Prager, which means ‘pole culture’ in English. All the vines are trained on poles, rather like the stakes used in Côte-Rôtie. This part of Achleiten is by the woods and above the fog line. The oldest vines were planted in the 1930s. The wine was even more acidic than its counterpart made from grapes further down the slope.

Five minutes along the road is Dürnstein, where the arid slopes behind Domäne Wachau feature the stone walls for which the Wachau is famous. Rows of vines are planted on the terraces atop the walls. I was told at Weingut Prager that thirty to forty sections in their vineyards were damaged in the Biblical rains of September 2024.

As the biggest name in the area, Domäne Wachau of course makes wines from Achleiten. I tried two young Grüner Veltliners, both classified Smaragd, but from different vineyards: one from Achleiten, the other from Kirnberg, a vineyard on the opposite side of the Danube. The one from Achleiten, I wrote, was ‘smoky and mineral’, with much higher acidity than the one from Kirnberg. I also tasted two Rieslings: one from Achleiten, the other from Singerriedel, a vineyard in Spitz, at the western end of the Wachau. Remarkably, the harvest in Spitz occurs two weeks after the grapes are picked in Dürnstein, despite the negligible distance between the two villages. I wrote that both Rieslings were ‘super dry.’

I didn’t get to see Achleiten, sadly, as I simply ran out of time. When I got back to the U.K., I went to Majestic Wine and cleaned them out of Domäne Wachau’s Riesling Smaragd Achleiten 2021. If a branch near you still has some stock, I suggest you do the same.