Winemaker Notes
The Ürziger Würzgarten Riesling Kabinett shows a clear, bright and floral bouquet with iodine nuances of crushed rocks intertwined with bright, filigreed Riesling fruit. Round and smooth on the palate, this is a textured, uncomplicated but pleasant Kabinett with a pretty sweet and finely savory finish.
Professional Ratings
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Vinous
The 2023 Riesling Ürziger Würzgarten Kabinett shows a flicker of reduction and a lovely savor of petrichor. The palate holds red apple peel and flesh with a beautiful saltiness that blends with a gentle touch of clementine sweetness. A picture of ease and lightness in true Merkelbach style.
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James Suckling
With its pronounced aromas of wild strawberries, baking spices and wet earth, this is a very striking riesling Kabinett. Still very youthful and slightly funky. Needs time for this to blow off, but it has a very good balance of restrained grape sweetness and mineral acidity.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2023 Ürziger Würzgarten Riesling Kabinett offers a discreet and delicate nose of ripe, finely concentrated fruit intertwined with delicate notes of crushed red slate. Very elegant and filigreed on the palate, this is a very delicate, round and charming Würzgarten Kabinett with a stimulating, crystalline and finely saline 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.