2016 Gruner Veltliner Loibner Berg Smaragd

The 2016 Ried Loibenberg Grüner Veltliner Smaragd is from the warmest vineyard of the family. Coming from a steep, terraced, very skeletal cru with iron-rich gneiss soils, the 2016 opens with a super clear, cool, fresh and well-defined nose that comes along with herbal and flinty notes but still indicates ripe and concentrated fruit from a warm vineyard. Full-bodied, round and intense, with perfectly ripe and warm fruit, this is a pure, piquant and crisp Grüner Veltliner with very good grip and mineral freshness. The finish is quite lush, the mineral structure, salinity and freshness stimulating. Lucas Pichler says that, in warmer vintages, he picks the vineyard ten days earlier than his father did and without botrytis to keep the freshness and elegance. His 2016 is great proof of that, although it was not a warm vintage. Tasted as a sample in early July, three weeks before the bottling.

From a warm, very steep, southwest-facing vineyard with partly 60+-year-old vines on a calcareous soil with schist elements, the 2016 Ried Liebenberg Gruner Veltliner Smaragd opens with a clear, fresh, cool and dusty-chalky bouquet of wet limestone and perfectly ripe, well concentrated fruits. On the palate, this is a full-bodied, rich, elegant, silky textured and well balanced Gruner Veltliner with fine tannins structuring the intense, juicy/fleshy and well concentrated fruit. The acidity is very fine here and the finish salty, velvety and round without being sweet. It is a great and structured Liebenberg and possibly one of the best Gruner Veltliners I have tasted in the Wachau from 2016. Tasted as a sample in July 2017, three weeks before bottling. Aug 2017, www.robertparker.com