Winemaker Notes
Making a Kabinett from these vines is a commitment to tradition. Most estates would take these 100+ year old vines and make a GG style wine and charge a lot more money. Instead, he’s offering us a piece of living history, because he feels like “it’s the right thing to do” to showcase the range of Mosel Kabinett.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Very cool and herbal, with a dense core on the light- to medium-bodied palate. Excellent minerality and wild berry character powers the long, crisp finish. It shows moderate acidity and is really dry for the category. From vines up to 100 years old.
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Vinous
The 2024 Riesling Longuicher Herrenberg Kabinett was made from three parcels of old vines on red slate, all over 105 years old. Its relatively shy nose does not give away the beautifully pure, bright, tender and smooth palate. The 2024 has supple texture and a lovely 28 g/L of residual sugar that comes across as off-dry. This is bottled gentleness. (Off-dry)
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.