Winemaker Notes
Abtsberg is the premier site on the Grunhaus hillside, it’s deep blue slate adding an extra dimension to the Riesling grown here. High toned aromas of white peach, Bosq pear, lime juice and sweet chives. Classic Spatlese sweetness with flavors redolent of dried apricot, guava, and a distinct herbal/smoky character.
Drink with spicy, full flavored foods like baked ham, venison, paella, bouillabaisse, ripe cheeses.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
Crystalline strikes of crushed slate and mineral accent this piercing, sun struck spätlese. Medium sweet on the palate yet pertly balanced by spine-tingling lime acidity, it’s an intensely fruity, tropical sip that explodes with mango, honeydew and passion fruit flavors. Light as a feather and endless on the finish, it’s at peak now through 2035 but will hold longer still. Editors’ Choice.
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James Suckling
With its ripe-pear, peach and mirabelle aromas, this is an immediately appealing spatlese, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. Plenty of acidity and subtlety lurking below the waters' calm surface. Long, rather dry finish.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2019 Maximin Grünhaus Riesling Abtsberg Spätlese is fresh and stony on the nose—almost greenish—and, in any case, terribly pure, fresh and precise, with flinty notes of crushed stones and also perfectly ripe tropical fruit aromas that come out with a bit of aeration. Mouthfillingly round and generous but also precise, fresh and finessed on the palate, this is a picture-book Spätlese that has more of a creamy texture than the more-crystalline Herrenberg Kabinett. The finish is concentrated and juicy, very aromatic and piquant.
Barrel Sample: (93-94)
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Tasting Panel
Sweet, creamy, and classic, with vanilla, honey, and ripe lime; elegant and long.
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Wine Spectator
Rich and creamy, yet lively, this white delivers peach, apricot, baked apple and celery seed aromas and flavors. A saline, mineral note underlines it all as this lingers on the finish. Complex and expressive. Drink now through 2040.
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.