Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
-
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2017 Wehlener Sonnenuhr Spätlese is impressively deep, dense and expressive on the nose that is more mineral rather than fruity. On the palate, this is a lush, tensioned, very precise, elegant, sharply defined and complex Riesling. It's not as exuberant as the Sonnenuhr can be, but it represents more of the gray/blue slate soil. The finish is really lush, perfectly concentrated and salty. This is a great Prüm icon Spätlese.
-
Wine Spectator
Guava and mango flavors are offset by vivifying citrusy acidity, creating a firm frame on which glazed apricot and star anise notes emerge. Powerful yet elegant, this is built for the cellar. Give this some air if you must drink it now, but better to wait for a decade or so. Best from 2022 through 2039.
-
Wine Enthusiast
The nose is subtle here, suggesting delicate whiffs of grapefruit and pollen, but the palate is buoyant, bursting with grapefruit and pineapple. It's sunny and sweet yet has a steely balance and tingling acidic backbone. Delicious already, it's concentrated enough to improve well through 2027.
Editors' Choice -
James Suckling
This is a world away from the frankly sweet Mosel Spätlese. Instead, it begins with intense lemon and herbal character. The rather dry palate follows with a challenging acidity. Quite a tart, but mineral finish.
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.