2016 Weingut Prager Riesling Smaragd Klaus Wachau Austria 750 ml

From Rock to Wine

Ask anyone about the top producers in the Wachau, and you’ll hear the two Ps: Pichler, of course, and Prager. The man at the helm at Prager, Toni Bodenstein, married into the Prager family and has since become a steward of the family’s legacy. He employs a meticulous blend of tradition and innovation to uncover the deeply held secrets of the Wachau soil. And if his motto “Vom Stein zum Wein” (“from rock to wine”) doesn’t perfectly express the soul of Riesling, then nothing does.

Bodenstein brings his tremendous learning to bear on Prager’s famous Rieslings, which vividly capture a sense of place. Vinous has credited him for “elevat(ing) the stature of his father-in-law Franz Prager’s estate to international notoriety with wines that consistently continue to be among the most complex, intriguing and subtle of any of the world’s Rieslings.”

Site-specific wines are Bodenstein’s passion, and his 2016 Prager Riesling Smaragd Klaus comes from one of the Wachau’s most famous Riesling vineyards—and with a slope that reaches 77 degrees at its steepest point, one of the most imposing. At Ried Klaus, sixty-five-year-old vines grow out of migmatite-amphibolite soils, which give the wine a lean lemon-lime nose, a faint note of fresh herbs, and absolutely captivating minerality: This wine literally smells like crushed rock of matchstick-flint, and boasts a wonderful salinity to boot. Prager’s Klaus earned an impressive 95 points from Wine Advocate, and will open up and age beautifully over the next 15 years.