Winemaker Notes
The newly named “Monopol” is Maximin Grunhauser’s brilliant, affordable estate riesling. Monopol refers to the fact that the Grunhauser estate owns the entire hillside of vineyards. Most vineyards in Germany are shared amongst dozens of growers, so this is quite uncommon. The wine is anything but uncommon as its aromas and flavors burst out with green apple, green pear, green tea, key lime and minerals. Dry on the palate with sizzling acidity and freshness. Can you find a better $20 Riesling from Germany?
Drink with classic German foods like bratwurst, schnitzel, baked ham or melted cheeses.
Professional Ratings
-
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2018 Maximin Grünhaus Riesling Monopol blends fruit from the three grand crus and opens with clear, aromatic mango fruit and, after a while, lots of flinty notes of crushed stones. Silky, pure and enormously salty on the palate, this is a stunning, complex, tensioned and almost challenging Estate Riesling with lingering salinity and immense complexity and charisma. A spectacular wine at this price point. Tasted in June 2019.
-
Wine Enthusiast
This fantastic value wine is a consistent favorite offering vibrant tangerine and lime flavors juxtaposed by complexities of earth, smoke and steel. Just a shade off dry, it’s an electric feinherb-style Riesling, with just the right amount of fruit, mineral and earthen intensity. Enjoy now through 2025
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.