Winemaker Notes
Delicate bouquet of ripe peach and tropical fruits, mixed with the fresh slate aroma typical for Mosel-Riesling. Complex fruit on the palate with blackcurrant, red berries and spices. The mineral acidity keeps the balance of fruit and sweetness.
It will make a great aperitif or a wonderful companion for aromatic, hot or very spicy dishes. After a few years of cellaring, aged Riesling is a delicious match to all kinds of food.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Quite a lot of funk at first, but it blows off fast to reveal extravagant yellow, exotic and berry fruit aromas. Very juicy with full-throttle, cassis acidity on the palate that holds this wide-screen wine together very nicely. Long, very balanced finish.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2019 Goldtröpfchen Spätlese is pure and flinty on the elegant and herbal nose that reveals depth, precision and finesse. Sweet and piquant on the palate, currently with burnt milk flavors possibly due to the sulfur addition, this is a salty-crystalline, tight, complex and mouth-filling Spätlese that needs at least 4-5 years to show its real character, which I suppose is a real good one.
Rating: 93+
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.