Franz Hirtzberger Steinporz Spitzer Riesling Smaragd 2021

Franz Hirtzberger and F.X. Pichler are often called the two pillars of the Wachau, anchoring opposite ends of the valley; Hirtzberger's end is Spitz, the cold, wind-swept far west, where ripening runs slow and the wines run to nerve. Ried Steinporz (a single vineyard) climbs the hill directly behind the village and marks the easternmost outcrop of the Spitz granodiorite gneiss, its thin, fast-draining soils held up by hand-built stone terraces. The viticulture is famously obsessive, with four to five passes through each vine at harvest, and the cellar work is restrained: indigenous yeasts, steel fermentation, aging in large older foudres, lees contact deliberately limited so nothing blurs the mineral line. Smaragd, the Wachau's ripest dry category, from one of Austria's greatest white wine estates. Riesling with real gravity.