Winemaker Notes
A lusciously exotic, select-harvest Riesling made with botrytis-affected grapes from the “spice garden” vineyard.
Auslese [OWS-lay-zuh] means “selected from the harvest,” and is a sweet wine made from very ripe clusters that are about 50 percent affected by botrytis. The resulting wine is dense, intensely flavored and rich on the palate, but balanced by Riesling’s naturally brisk acidity. The red volcanic soil of the Ürziger Wu¨rzgarten vineyard produces wines with precocious tropical fruits, a rich texture and a pleasingly persistent finish.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2021 Ürziger Würzgarten Auslese is bright and delicate on the finely flinty nose that represents a delicate slate and rocky tone. Lush and savory on the palate, this is a sensual and delicate, light but fruit intense and tender Auslese with great finesse and very fine raisin notes. Entirely fermented in oak yet still in the barrel.
Barrel Sample: 94-96 -
James Suckling
The complex nose of lemon balm and chamomile leads you into this concentrated and filigree riesling with so much white flower fragrance and a passion fruit freshness that are extremely invigorating. So much depth for this challenging vintage, but also a sensuality that makes this wine hard to resist. Drink or hold.
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Wine Enthusiast
This is svelte, yet very expressive, bursting with apricot, wet-stone and vanilla-cream flavors. The bright acidity acts as a counterpoint to the sweetness, keeping this focused and long on the finish.
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.