Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The medium to full-bodied 2001 Riesling Spatlese Niederhauser Hermannshohle is the greatest Spatlese I've ever tasted. Its liquid mineral and spice scents lead to a mind boggling personality of otherworldly richness, depth, and concentration. This massive yet intensely pure wine bastes the taster's palate with oily layers of minerals, almonds, earth, and smoky slate whose flavors are seemingly unending (unendlich, as F. X. Pichler, Austria's superstar winemaker, says). This is a prodigious, benchmark-setting effort.
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Wine Spectator
A beautifully understated spätlese, with subtle power, density and length. The passion fruit, sweet corn, berry, fennel and mineral notes are layered and just keep coming at you. Superbly balanced, it seems effortless and ethereal. The finish just melts away.
Recognized as a top quality grape here since the Middle Ages, Germany retains its high reputation as a premier source of the finest Riesling. Heavily planted throughout the Rheingau and Mosel, Riesling responds splendidly to these regions’ extreme climatic and topographic challenges. Cold-hardy enough to survive freezing winters, and sturdy enough to withstand the warm sun, Riesling has enough natural acidity to maintain balance, even in wines with the highest levels of residual sugar. While high quality is possible in all points of the sweet to dry spectrum, Riesling typically produces wine with relatively low alcohol, high acidity, steely minerality, stone fruit, citrus, spice and floral notes. With age, Riesling can become truly revelatory, developing unique, complex aromatics, often with a hint of petrol.