Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
A giant of filigree and finesse with a dazzling brilliance that takes your breath away. The natural grape sweetness and diamond-bright acidity are already so perfectly integrated. In spite of its great concentration, this has a wonderfully sleek silhouette. Aromatically this is still quite closed, but white tree fruit is the dominant register.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Like the old-vines Kabinett, the 2023 Scharzhofberger Spätlese (AP #6) also opens with a coolish and still discreet yet concentrated bouquet of broken slate and wet clay. On the palate, this is a dense, enormously juicy and savory Spätlese with lemon zest aromas, ripe, elegant acidity and a grippy mineral structure. It is very salty again and always savory and fresh. This is a great Scharzhofebger that should be cellared for at least 10 or, better, 20+ years. Tasted in April 2024, the night before the terrible spring frost destroyed 90% of the potential crop.
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Vinous
The 2023 Riesling Scharzhofberger Spätlese still has a touch of reduction, but the verve of citrus backed by creaminess shines through. passionfruit foliage fringes the lemon notes and leads to a palate that plunges into the cleanest candied lemon sweetness—tart, deliciously sharp and thrilling. The crystalline clarity gives the impression of naked wet slate. It's astonishing to have so much fruit and stone. Exquisite balance and tension make this endlessly long, stretching that impression of elegance into slow motion, making it even more apparent.
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.