Winemaker Notes
#87 Wine Spectator Top 100 of 2023
The terrifyingly steep Brauneberg hillside has been revered as a top vineyard site since Roman times (it was the Romans who first cultivated wine grapes in the Mosel valley). For centuries, Brauneberg wines were among the most celebrated of all Mosel Rieslings. The Brauneberger Juffer Kabinett is a selection of early-picked fruit and has a very fine, delicate structure. Its pure, energizing fruitiness and expressive minerality exemplify the Fritz Haag style.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Such a pristine and uplifting Mosel Kabinett, the interplay of brilliant acidity and fine peach, chamomile and white flower aromas. Lightning strikes at the finish where the touch of unfermented grape sweetness evaporates like a drop of water on a hot slate stone. So delicious and so much potential. Drink or hold.
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Wine Spectator
Despite the sweetness, this is laser-focused and linear, powered by a lime-edged beam of bracing acidity and refined crushed slate minerality. Builds in concentration to flavors of apple blossoms and honeyed orchard fruit, with a thread of smoke. This has a long life ahead. Drink now through 2035.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The medium-sweet 2021 Juffer Kabinett is clear and finely reductive on the precise and leafy nose. Lush, round and sweet as well as tangy on the palate, this is an elegant, refined, saline and savory Kabinett that will be easy to quaff in a year or two. The acidity is sharp but embedded in charming, lush fruit.
Rating: 91+
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.