Tag Archives: Mosel Valley

April 16, 2013 · 5:49 pm

Reichsgraf von Kesselstatt – 31/01/2012

Kaseler Trocken Riesling 2010
Very mineral and flinty nose, nice balance, very approachable, apple and pear crispness, fresh and friendly, nice purity and lines.

Wiltinger Trocken Riesling 2010
More struck-match minerality, nicely balanced, less fruit character, hints of kale and parsley, fresh and clean, great finish.

Nies’chen Grosses Gewachs Riesling 2010
More gunpowder, floral honeydew melon, hints of paw paw, nice dry balance, complex and full, delicate pineapple tropicality.

Juffer-Sonnenuhr Grosses Gewachs Riesling 2010
Very subdued, a little sour, reminiscent of apple juice.

Josephshofer Kabinett Riesling 2010
Wonderful integration, lovely balance, off-dry and long, delicate fruit and floral notes.

Scharzofberger Kabinett Riesling 2010
Salty briny nose, slightly different texturally, good acid freshness, wonderful finish, nice balance, ageing potential.

Scharzofberger Kabinett Riesling 2010
Richer on the palate, lovely savoury off-dry, slight Japanese flavour.

Brauneberger Juffer-Sonneuhr Spatlese Riesling 2005
Beautiful richness, wonderful balance, nice long finish.

Auslese Gold Cap #10 Riesling 2010
Lemon barley cordial apple, extremely concentrated, amazingly deep and rich, lovely and fresh, great finish.

Reichsgraf von Kesselstatt tasting

Reichsgraf von Kesselstatt tasting

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April 16, 2013 · 5:35 pm

Clemensbusch – 30/01/2012

Vom Roten Shiefer Risling 2010
Slatey mineral, very fresh zingy nose, ripe lemon smoked honey, lemon sherbet, great brightness, textural fruit, zesty lime.

Marienburg Grosses Gewachs Riesling 2008
Peach blossom apricot and honey, nice clean and fresh, great concentration of fruit, nice balance, lovely pure expression, lime and grapefruit.

Marienburg Grosses Gewachs Riesling 2010
Really lovely zingy fresh fruit, fresh citrus and green papaya, citric acid spritz, very young.

Marienburg Grosses Gewachs Rothenffad Riesling 2010
Candied aromatics, dried banana, creamy soda, coke lollies. Intense minerals, rich fruit on the mid-palate, more complex and deep.

Marienburg Grosses Gewachs Falkenlay Riesling 2010
Rounder fuller depth, bright acid freshness, nice balance, very vibrant and fresh.

Marienburg Grosses Gewachs Falkenlay Riesling 2009
Riper tropical pineapple aromas, hints of oily kerosene, fuller texture and viscosity, ripeness and sweetness, some savoury earthy smokiness.

Marienburg Erste Lage Spatlese 2010
Talcy soapy, very delicate semi-sweet, ripe citrus and stone fruit, viscosity and texture.

Auslese Riesling 2006
Oiliness starting to show on the nose, quite treacly and syrupy, nice complex savoury elements, lovely warming fruit salad & custard.

Clemensbusch wines

Clemensbusch wines

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April 16, 2013 · 5:13 pm

Heymann-Lowenstein – 30/01/2012

Schifeterassen Reserve Riesling 2010
Nice floral botrytised aromas, pear peach nectarine, brisk zippy acids, nice balance, hints of minerality, good concentration, a bit of texture, great clean finish.

Von Blauern Schiefer Riesling 2010
Slightly more candied nose and citrus, grapefruit concentration, sweetness doesn’t stand out, quite sharp, immense minerality.

Kirchberg Erste Lage Reserve Riesling 2010
Different minerality, slightly deeper, lime and peach, seems more complex and floaty.

Rottgen Erste Lage Reserve Riesling 2010
Much more intense, fuller more depth, riper stone fruit, acids more tempered, longer on the palate, very aromatic floral notes.

Uhlen Erste Lage B Reserve Riesling 2010
Very serious wine, blue slate, brooding complexity, very long, builds on the palate.

Uhlen Erste Lage LaubalyReserve Riesling 2010
Sweetness more prominent, broader rounder style, textural floral minerality.

Uhlen Erste Lage Rothlay Reserve Riesling 2009
Juby candied apricot, texturally very different, acids much lower in this vintage, apricot and orange.

Heymann-Lowenstein slates

Heymann-Lowenstein slates

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April 14, 2013 · 9:01 am

Max Ferdinand Richter – 2/02/2012

The wines from the Mulheimer Sonnenlay vineyard, which is a monopol owned exclusively by the estate, are more vibrant fresh and zingy in their acidity.

The Brauneberger wines tend to be more concentrated and subtle, with distinct minerality coming from the brown slate soil.

Moving up through the quality and sweetness scale, the wines began to exhibit some elderberry and tropical fruit characteristics with nice delicate viscosity to coat the mouth.

The Veldenzer Elisenberg wines contribute a further element of spice and herbs to them.

We finished with an Eiswine from 2010 (there will be no Eiswine from the 2011 vintage as the first frosts for winter only happened this week), which was extremely concentrated and syrupy, but having great acidity carries the flavours across the palate beautifully.

Max Ferdinand Richter wines

Max Ferdinand Richter wines

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November 22, 2012 · 9:21 pm

The Vintage Experience

After two months an important part of my trip has concluded. Important not just because I learnt a lot about wine, but also as I needed work to get a working-holiday visa to remain in Europe all year. After 10 months of solid visits to wineries with a few brief intermissions, I was grateful for a break in wine when I travelled through the UK, Ireland, The Netherlands and Northern Germany before returning to wine, this time on the other side of the fence. Another thing I was grateful for was some money and the chance to stay somewhere for free for a few months, thus saving me some money that I didn’t have. It is with all sincerity that I thank first the Hasselbach family from Weingut Gunderloch in the Rheinhessen, and second Annegret Reh-Gartner and her team at Reichsgraf von Kesselstatt in the Mosel, for their generosity in welcoming me and allowing me to gain first-hand insights into German riesling.
Picking grapes in the Rheinhessen

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November 4, 2012 · 2:51 pm

Vintage 2012 – Week Seven

Week two at Kesselstatt was mostly the same as the first. The fruit coming in is of a very high quality, but unfortunately it is in quite small quantities. With the very cool and wet weather we have been having the ripeness is not as high as Wolfgang would like, but they are very healthy bunches with little rot. It is nice to get into a routine of checking the ferments followed by transferring filtered juice into fermentation tanks each day, but it can also be a little dull doing the same thing every day. Such is the beauty and the curse of working exclusively with white wine, as they require much less work than reds. Some of the days have been a bit shorter with much less work to do in the winery as a by-product of lower volumes but healthy fruit. Thursday was a holiday in Germany and Wolfgang was nice enough to take the team to a local restaurant for some hearty schnitzels.

Gorgeously ripe berries in the vineyards opposite Schloss Marienlay, covered in morning condensation.
Schloss Marienlay, the headquarters of Reichsgraf von Kesselstatt.
The Piesporter vineyards in the heart of the Mosel Valley.
The famous blue slate soils of the Mosel.

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February 3, 2012 · 12:24 pm

An Education (Mosel, Germany – Day Four)

Tasting the wines from the Mosel, I started to come up with a theory as to why they are so unappreciated in so many markets. Consumers are led to believe that wine must be strong and possibly heavy, and if it a wine is easy to drink then it is simple and cheap. The nature of wines from the Mosel having residual sugar to offset the acids makes them very fresh, approachable and easy to drink. Therefore in their minds they almost feel guilty that they are so easy to drink. It also comes back to the idea that wine is an alcoholic beverage consumed to become intoxicated, rather than how it should be consumed, with food. Being so approachable and low in alcohol makes these wines so adaptable to food it begs the question; what does it take to get people to drink these wines more, and value them properly?

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February 3, 2012 · 11:47 am

The definition of austerity (Mosel, Germany – Day Three)

I shared an interesting discussion with Daniel Vollenweider over the nature of the riesling grape on my second day in the Mosel region. Previously he had spent time working in wineries in New Zealand and the United States, and he couldn’t understand why the New World considered riesling an aromatic variety. Tasting many of the wines from the Mosel and seeing how complex they can be, it isn’t hard to understand his point. But an investigation on Wikipedia classifies the variety as aromatic, and in other regions such as Alsace they may classify it as such too.What then is an aromatic variety. The literal interpretation would be that it has more bouquet than a complex wine, but this isn’t necessarily the case. It is perhaps more pertinent to consider the nature of the winemaking, whereby it is generally fermented in stainless steel tanks, and sees no barrel maturation. The complexity comes in the variety itself, the environment (such as the minerals in the soil), and from bottle age. So in this sense riesling could be considered complex, much like chardonnay (complex variety) from the Chablis region. I guess the difference with riesling wines from the New World is that they are almost always consumed young. This would make them aromatic in nature, as they have little inherent complexity, compared to wines from the Mosel. What are your thoughts on the topic?

Castle Landshut above Bernkastel

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February 2, 2012 · 5:51 pm

Back to the future (Mosel, Germany – Day Two)

For the first time on my trip, I feel totally out of my depth in the Mosel Valley. Having started my wine career in the Yarra Valley, and working for a sparkling producer, means that I am very familiar with the varieties of Burgundy, Bordeaux and the Rhone Valley. When it comes to Riesling, I am a little bit out of my element. I have gained some familiarity with the wines of such regions as the Clare Valley and Eden Valley, and also other emerging regions in Australia and New Zealand. Visiting Alsace in 2010 helped a lot, but of course Riesling isn’t necessarily the focus. German rieslings, particularly the wines of the Mosel, are in an entirely different league. This is of course why I have come to the region; to gain familiarity and experience.

On top of the world, looking down on creation!

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February 1, 2012 · 9:04 am

Take me to the river (Mosel Valley, Germany – Day One)

Whilst I admit that it was wonderful starting the European leg of my trip in the familiarity of Champagne, there was something quite exhilarating about arriving into a totally new region. I spent the past week staying with a friend in the German town of Neuss trying to organise my visa and a car, and then caught up with some friends I met in the States in Cologne over the weekend. On Sunday afternoon I drove down in very cold conditions towards my base for the next five nights, the town of Traben-Trarbach, situated in the middle of the Mosel-Saar-Ruwer. The town straddles the Mosel River; Traben on the North side and Trarbach on the South. Just as I was entering the valley above the Mosel River, it began to snow very lightly, which made it that much more beautiful. It was already dusk so it was a little too dark, but amazing nonetheless.

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