J.J. Prum Wehlener Sonnenuhr Riesling Auslese 2017
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Enthusiast
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Suckling
James
Product Details
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Somm Note
Winemaker Notes
Pairs well with Asian cuisine, as an aperitif or with richer main courses.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2017 Wehlener Sonnenuhr Auslese is intense and concentrated on the nose, with raisin, grapefruit and even vegetable aromas at the moment. This is highly attractive and noble on both the nose and palate. The wine is lush and dense on the palate but highly elegant, crystalline and fine, revealing a highly stimulating, salty-piquant and intensely aromatic and complex finish. This is an outstanding wine, and it's highly digestible.
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Wine Enthusiast
Whiffs of smoke and crushed earth blow off quickly with aeration to reveal succulent white-peach, yellow-cherry and grapefruit tones. It's unabashedly fresh and forward in fruit, yet anchored by a core of stony mineral tones and zippy light-saber acidity. It's a hedonistic yet impeccably balanced wine that drinks well already but will improve well through 2035, and likely beyond.
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James Suckling
Full of peaches and citrus with a hint of mint. This is both ripe and charming with the delicacy you’d expect from the Mosel. A crisp, long finish.
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Riesling possesses a remarkable ability to reflect the character of wherever it is grown while still maintaining its identity. A regal variety of incredible purity and precision, this versatile grape can be just as enjoyable dry or sweet, young or old, still or sparkling and can age longer than nearly any other white variety. Somm Secret—Given how difficult it is to discern the level of sweetness in a Riesling from the label, here are some clues to find the dry ones. First, look for the world “trocken.” (“Halbtrocken” or “feinherb” mean off-dry.) Also a higher abv usually indicates a drier Riesling.
Following the Mosel River as it slithers and weaves dramatically through the Eifel Mountains in Germany’s far west, the Mosel wine region is considered by many as the source of the world’s finest and longest-lived Rieslings.
Mosel’s unique and unsurpassed combination of geography, geology and climate all combine together to make this true. Many of the Mosel’s best vineyard sites are on the steep south or southwest facing slopes, where vines receive up to ten times more sunlight, a very desirable condition in this cold climate region. Given how many twists and turns the Mosel River makes, it is not had to find a vineyard with this exposure. In fact, the Mosel’s breathtakingly steep slopes of rocky, slate-based soils straddle the riverbanks along its entire length. These rocky slate soils, as well as the river, retain and reflect heat back to the vineyards, a phenomenon that aids in the complete ripening of its grapes.
Riesling is by far the most important and prestigious grape of the Mosel, grown on approximately 60% of the region’s vineyard land—typically on the desirable sites that provide the best combination of sunlight, soil type and altitude. The best Mosel Rieslings—dry or sweet—express marked acidity, low alcohol, great purity and intensity with aromas and flavors of wet slate, citrus and stone fruit. With age, the wine’s color will become more golden and pleasing aromas of honey, dried apricot and sometimes petrol develop.
Other varieties planted in the Mosel include Müller-Thurgau, Spätburgunder (Pinot Noir) and Weissburgunder (Pinot Blanc), all performing quite well here.