Winemaker Notes
Ürziger Würzgarten produces wines of a completely unique nature. The wines show the typically juicy and exotic fruit of the “spice garden” vineyard, with a rich mouth feel, a spicy acid tingle and lingering finish. Kabinett is the lightest, most delicate style of Riesling in Germany, produced from the earliest harvested grapes.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Lots of berry and herb aromas make this a very striking Kabinett, then a brilliant interplay of acidity, fruit and spice gives it a lot of excitement. Drink or hold. Screw cap.
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Tasting Panel
Crisp and sweet, with notes of peach and honey balanced by fine acid structure; pure and long.
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Wine Enthusiast
This zingy kabinett is such an irresistible lightning bolt of Riesling. While subtle and mineral on the nose, the palate jolts with lime, yellow-peach and tangerine flavors struck by tangs of salt and slate. Light in body yet piercing in style, it finishes long on a murmur of spice and earth. It’s hard not to drink this one immediately but it should hold through 2030 as well.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The sample of the 2019 Ürziger Würzgarten Riesling Kabinett is still very reductive on the bright and floral nose. Juicy and round on the palate, this is a salty-piquant and stimulating Kabinett with good freshness and tension.
Barrel Sample: (90-92)
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.