Smaragd

This Austrian term is used only in the Wachau region of Lower Austria for the ripest grapes and, hence, for the fullest-bodied wines. Smaragd (pronounced smar-AHGD) wines must have a minimum of 12.5 percent alcohol, but most have considerably more. The word smaragd is also the name of a bright green lizard that suns itself in the Wachau vineyards.29

Charbono: The Next Cult Wine in Napa Valley

“Age gives a wine a sense of beauty and satisfaction that it could never have had before when it was young. In our minds, we intuit that beauty and satisfaction as a feeling of completeness. Because so much of life is incomplete, an old wine is remarkable and moving.”

—Warren Winiarski,
founder of Napa Valley’s Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars

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