2016 Rudi Pichler - Riesling Kirchweg Smaragd

Nose, midpalate and finish alike here practically burst with bright lime and grapefruit, crunchy mustard seed, and vibrant, crystalline stony impingement, an impression delightfully complemented by a sense of lift rare at Smaragd weight, and especially at this address. That impression of buoyancy in turn suits this wine’s wafting aura of bittersweet, musky iris and gentian perfume. And the lingering finish offers considerable dark intrigue to accompany its bursting brightness and crunchy ping, in the form of wet stone, iodine, and pumice. Pichler’s holding in Kirchweg, incidentally, is part of roughly one-and-a-half acres near the northern edge of this site that are prominently underlain with coarse pebbles and small cobbles – the rest represents loess and alluvial deposits to a considerable depth. “I can’t think of another Wachau ‘grand cru’ other than Schütt that’s similarly almost flat,” observed Pichler, and in the case of Schütt, too (as its name, meaning “rubble,” implies), underlying stones seem to make the crucial qualitative difference.