Winemaker Notes
The essence of four Enkircher Spitzenlagen vineyards gives this wine a lot of power and elegance from over 60-year-old, partly ungrafted vines.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Pretty closed, with an intense flinty character in the first moment, this needs some aeration to bring out the stone fruit, caramelized pear and pie crust aromas. Concentrated and creamy, with a deep well of minerality, this de facto village wine has stunning depth and finesse on the medium-bodied palate. Then the almost endless finish knocks you sideways. From organically grown grapes grown in all the top sites of Enkirch, with the Ellergrub slightly in the majority. Drink or hold. Screw cap.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2023 Escheburg is from 60-year-old Riesling vines, mainly from the Ellergrub (50%), that yielded 35 hectoliters per hectare. The wine vinified in smaller oak barrels for 10 months and opens with a reductive and stony bouquet of ripe and open fruit aromas with flinty nuances. Round and juicy on the palate, this is a dense and complex, saline and savory, super salivating and energetic Escheburg with tension, precision and character. It was bottled in late August 2024 with 11.5% stated alcohol and a screw-cap closure. Tasted in December 2024.
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.