Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Tasted again from my private library along with the 2021s, Molitor's inaugural Serrig 2020 Vogelsang Kabinett opens with a clear, precise and savory bouquet of ripe, intense, bright fruit aromas. Round, lush and slightly caramelly due to the extraordinary warmth and ripeness of the vintage, this is a charmingly round, generous, very intense, long and tensioned Kabinett with lots of terroir and vintage expression. It is a little sweet on the aftertaste but is vital and intense on the palate and stimulating on the crystalline and savory finish. It is remarkably intense and only moderately sweet. This bottle confirms my findings from last year. 10.5% stated alcohol. Natural cork.
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James Suckling
Very fresh and delicate nose of an entire garden of herbs, yellow grapefruit and pomelo. Juicier than the nose suggested with stacks of white tree fruits and citrus zest freshness on the medium-bodied palate, this is a youthful and very elegant riesling for the 2020 vintage. Emphatically dry and long for this theoretically off-dry category, but also finely etched. This has just reached its best youthful drinking form, but the party has only just begun! Drink or hold.
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Wine Enthusiast
This shows crunchy minerality and salinity, with apple, passion fruit and citrus flavors accenting the stony core. It is glossy and well cut, and it enlivens the palate with its energetic acidity and savory evocations. Fine length. Banville Wine Merchants.
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.