May 10, 2023 - Lovely Austrian Riesling. The Smaragd designation born out with a full bodied wine with 13.5% alcohol. Stone fruit flavors of peach and then wet stone. This can go for a good bit longer and might get better. Great acidity masked by the fruit. A touch of sweetness but maybe that's the big fruit load.
April 30, 2023 - Not a great bottle
Pretty advanced with deep yellow as before but fruit sweetness gone and able to buffer the acidity
Too bad
November 10, 2020 - drinking well...deep yellow color and initially fairly tart/acidic that opens and broadens with air. Wine never becomes what I would call sweet and is well balanced. I thought it paired very well with rich Thai food that had a good deal of coconut. Not sure I would buy again but definitely enjoyed the wine
February 29, 2020 - Dunkles, sehr intensives Goldgelb. Gleich nach dem Öffen sehr säurelastig, scharf. Nach einer Stunde an der Lift ein deutlich anders Bild.
Gelbfruchtig in der Nase, Marille, Pfirsich, Ringlotten, würzig.
Am Gaumen tragende Säure, aber nicht mehr so scharf/kantig wie zu Beginn. Wieder gelbe Fruchtaromen, vor allem Pfirsich. Glockenklar. Ein Traum von einem Riesling!
July 14, 2019 - Very good bottle with cut and good fruit and nothing viscous here or pronounced sweetness.
Very nice
April 1, 2019 - 1 hr decnat; golden in color, very honeyed and somewhat viscous though very good acidic balance; obviously infected with botrytis this year. Definite sipper, though lovely.
December 25, 2018 - Horribly corked...what a disappointment!!
July 31, 2018 - quite acidic and not sure felt the Smaragd weight I'd expect. expected a bit more weight
March 4, 2018 - Relatively dark yellow. Sweet, perfumed and floral on the nose, with grapefruit notes. Rich and ripe in the mouth, with plenty of acidity. A bit disjointed and needs cellaring.
September 14, 2017 - Prager Dinner with Robert Bodenstein (Chicago, IL): This is a dry riesling that seems to have benefitted from the riper vintage, which bestowed on this wine some honeyed tones, as well as a bit of sweetness from the riper fruit. Despite that, there is some serious cut at the same time, which makes this a pretty good package. It's plausible that the two extra years of bottle age are what it takes to transform something like the (relatively unintegrated) 2015 to this.