Winemaker Notes
J.J. Prum Wehlener Sonnenuhr Riesling Auslese shows notes of peach, apricot and baked apple on the nose. Velvety on the palate with persistent notes of tropical fruit.
Try with Indian and Asian dishes as well as soft cheeses.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
This great Wehlener Sonnenuhr Auslese shows exactly the combination of white flower and white peach aromas with silky succulence and extraordinary freshness that made these wines legendary. There’s a healthy amount of unfermented grape sweetness, but the interplay of this with the myriad other components is so complex and fascinating. Super-graceful finish that feels like stroking satin.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Intense tropical fruit aromas such as fully ripe mangoes but also baby pineapples open the 2023 Wehlener Sonnenuhr Auslese that reveals a savory slate spice. On the palate, this is a rich yet savory and persistently saline, juicy and structured Auslese with a long and still mouth-filling finish. 8% stated alcohol. Natural cork.
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Vinous
The 2023 Riesling Wehlener Sonnenuhr Auslese, made with virtually no botrytis from ripe grapes, offers equal notes of grapefruit peel, juicy peach and lemon. The extreme finesse of the Prüm style meets the site's elegance, with stony lemon running like a central vein through the linear, elongated body. Such finesse, lightness and filigree nature, yet so much depth. Simply astonishing and a paradigm of site and style.
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Wine Spectator
Lifted and refined, with ripe apple and pear that glide seamlessly across the palate, which is punctuated by savory elements of dried thyme and oregano and underscored by smoky mineral details. Streamlined and fluid, with razor-sharp acidity softened by the sweetness for perfect balance.
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.