Winemaker Notes
Try with Indian and Asian dishes as well as soft cheeses.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Still very youthful on the nose, this is crammed with ripe peach, plus more delicate notes of pineapple and mangosteen. It’s a minor miracle that this kind of concentration can be packed into such a sleek, medium-bodied palate. What an amazing mouthfeel this has thanks to the seamless integration of slatey acidity and ripeness. Very long finish with spot-on balance. Drinkable now, but best from 2025.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2022 Wehlener Sonnenuhr Auslese is clear, deep and dense on the clear and fresh as well as smoky but super detailed and saline nose. Rich and lush on the palate, this is a vibrantly fresh and savory, persistently saline and sustainable Auslese with a long, generous yet refined and mineral finish. It's very expressive and substantial. 8% stated alcohol. Natural cork.
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Decanter
While tightly wound in youth and too nervous to express itself fully, there's a core of sun-drenched peach and yellow cherry lusciousness that pulsates from within here. It's still subtle on the nose, but the palate can't hide the intensity of fruit and swirls of honey and hibiscus nectar waiting to unfurl. Delicate sweetness is balanced by a lifting spray of minerality and a spine of laser-edged acidity. Hold until 2030 at least; it's a wine to enjoy over decades.
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Wine Spectator
An impressively balanced and expressive auslese, with a plush well of guava, passion fruit and apricot preserves set against a wall of minerals. Alpine herbs and vibrant acidity give this a zingy freshness and racy feel, which carries the opulence well. Plum skin bitterness and some good structure make this complex and harmonious. Stunning. Drink now through 2045.
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.