Winemaker Notes
The Herrenberg Spatlese is always the flashiest wine at Grunhaus as the vineyards red slate soils render a more lush, slightly lower acid riesling that its bigger brother Abstberg. Spatlese sweet with explosive aromas and flavors of red delicious apples, yellow peaches, strawberry/rhubarb and salty minerals.
Full bodied for a riesling, serve with a Virginia baked ham, a spicy lamb curry or just a traditional Jaeger schnitzel.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
There’s a very flinty nose here with a twist of reduction adding interest to such pure, floral and white-peach aromas. The palate has a very elegant, delicate and detailed feel with a clear, neatly struck point of balance between acidity and sugar. This has excellent length and beautifully pure fruit.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The golden-yellow colored 2018 Maximin Grünhaus Herrenberg Spätlese opens with an intense, floral and nutty-scented bouquet with a discreet but crunchy slatey layer. The wine is lush and generous on the palate, with opulent yet refined and structured fruit and stimulating mineral grip on the finish. This is another highlight of the 2018 range at Grünhaus.
Rating: 94(+?)
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Wine Spectator
Opulent, almost like an auslese, with hints of coconut, papaya, vanilla spice and lemon icing. However, this is never dull and flabby, as the acidity pierces through and delivers the balance and energy needed to pick up such an expressive palate. Tea notes emerge on the finish. Best from 2022 through 2035.
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.