2012 Franz Hirtzberger Axpoint Gruner Veltliner Smaragd

2012 Franz Hirtzberger Axpoint Gruner Veltliner Smaragd

Franz Hirtzberger and their family reside in a 600 year old house at the base of the famed Singerriedl vineyard. The winery is located in hilly Spitz, at the western end of the Wachau, as the Danube snakes down from the mountains. The cool air of this area reinforces the minerality and delicacy of Hirtzberger's wines. The family is a pillar of the Vinea Wachau Nobilis Districtus organization that preserves the quality of the zones wines zone– Franz’s father was a founder and today Franz is the President. The Hirtzberger winemaking philosophy is simple: closely managed vineyards, natural yeasts, fermentation in stainless steel, aging in large oak for Gruner Veltliner and acacia for Riesling.

Critical Acclaim

96 Robert Parker's Wine Advocate

Lime and lentil, apple and peach scent and flavor the at once creamily rich and infectiously juicy Hirtzberger 2012 Gruner Veltliner Smaragd Honivogl, taking on an intriguingly ore-like sense of low-toned mineral matter as well as black tea smokiness, and acquiring a cyanic glow of peach kernel and piquant sizzle of lime rind en route to a lingering and complexly undulating finish that seems to consist of wave upon wave breaking over the threshold of your palate until you can no longer restrain the urge to take the next sip. Textural creaminess uncannily coexists here with transparency to nuance and a sense of light-footedness that cannot recall in a previous installment of this wine. Certainly, the vintage is contributory to that buoyancy, but it may also reflect the influence of generational change. "Through the inclusion of over-ripe, botrytis-tinged bunches," opines Franz Hirtzberger Jr. as we taste this wine, "you can obtain an impression of opulence, fullness and textural richness without (indulging in) long lees contact. I like a middle-way, looking for maybe two, three, five shriveled berries - but it has to be very clean botrytis - and the rest of the bunch completely healthy green-gold." Look for this latest in a three-decade-long series of often sensational Gruner Veltliners to prove worth following through 2025 and probably beyond.

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