Winemaker Notes
The Fritz Haag Brauneberger Juffer is more precocious and affordable of two Spatlese produced at the estate. It comes from the younger vines and offers immediate attraction and drinkability. Aromas and flavors of Mirabelle plum, white peach, honeydew melon and marzipan, all juxtaposed against a canvas of minerals and slate.
So, so refined and elegant. Let this shine with a simple roast chicken, a mildly seasoned veal chop, delicate seafood like cracked crab, or just manchego cheese and raspberries.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2016 Brauneberger Juffer Riesling Spätlese is very clear and nicely reductive on the flinty and limey nose. Lush, round and very elegant on the palate, this is a beautifully mineral and complex Sonnenuhr with a long and intensely aromatic but always refined and refreshing mineral finish. This is a fabulous Spätlese from the Juffer. Tasted March 2018
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James Suckling
Very youthful and elegant with a beautiful interplay of aromas (white peach, tropical fruit and vanilla), restrained sweetness, bright acidity and mineral freshness. Drink any time during the next decade.
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Wine Enthusiast
Intense aromas of dusty slate and flint show prominently but there's also plenty of ripe, penetrating yellow-peach and nectarine flavors waiting to burst through. High toned acidity and a fine, filigreed texture mark the midpalate. It's a complex, faceted wine that should meld further from 2021–2030.
Cellar Selection
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Wine Spectator
Concentrated flavors of orchard and stone fruit mingle in this light and graceful style. Abundant acidity keeps this fresh and delivers a long finish that is marked by notes of sage and slate. Drink now through 2029.
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.