Winemaker Notes
Zilliken Rausch Riesling GG is the estate's top dry wine from the best parcel of the Rausch vineyard. Delicate aromas of ripe melon, lemon curd and meadow flowers and a cool herbal austerity open a nose of breathtaking beauty and elegance. Deep, refined orange, passion fruit and candied lemon dance across the nearly vertical palate, while the grippy texture is redeemed by a pliable, persistent acidity.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
This dry bottling from its famed Saarburger Rausch vineyard, this is a sleek, hauntingly concentrated wine. While light in body, it’s a ripe, almost cream-textured Riesling layered with luscious white peach, grapefruit and gooseberry flavors. Reflective of the vintage, it’s a distinctly richer, more extracted expression of the Saar, yet maintains a steely, earthen edge. Approachable now but should improve through 2035 and hold longer still. Editors’ Choice.
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James Suckling
The pink-grapefruit, mint and spring-blossom character is just beginning to emerge from this tightly wound and concentrated dry white with just enough body to give this a really elegant balance. Long, cool, lime and mineral finish. Excellent aging potential. Better from 2021.
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Tasting Panel
Smooth and dry, with floral notes; round and rich yet elegant. Lovely.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Tasted as a pretty clear and finished sample in April 2020, Zilliken's 2019 Rausch GG opens with a generously aromatic yet elegant and well balanced bouquet of fruit and slate aromas with a kiss of Traminer. Dense and mouthfilling on the palate, with a certain astringency on the finish, this is a pretty sweetish GG with elegance and texture. It is mouthfilling and salty-piquant on the crystalline finish. Range: 90-92+
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.