From: Rheingau, Germany
Varietal: Riesling
Tasting Notes: On the nose, gardenia and ginger flower aromas meld seamlessly with a delectably briny lemon confit. On the palate, this wine transports you to a day full of afternoon sunlight; salted lemon, dried honey, sea breezes…nostalgia.
Nostalgia expanded: ripe peach pit, lemon verbena, herbal minerality. Please see notes on the 2018 below. With that read, the 2016 in comparison is a more complete wine, that sweetness element of a Feinherb Riesling that has come into itself in its honeyed magnificence. (It’s dry).
On the 2018: “full of fruit, stony elements and pleasing density, it’s a Riesling that while opulent has class and vitality with inner energy and natural acidity that gives life and structural integrity showing wild peach, green apple, apricot, lime and papaya fruits along with hints of lees, wet rock and verbena as well as saline, chamomile and lingering zesty/tangy tangerine. The nose opens with white blossoms slowly and backwards at this stage, this wine’s light sweetness is polished and adds greatly to the whole.” –Grapelive, 93 points
Pairing: This riesling will pair beautifully with Ali Slagle’s recipe for Spicy Sheet-Pan Sausage and Squash.
About. The Spreitzer estate, founded in 1641 and one of the oldest in the Rheingau, benefits from a long tradition in winemaking as well as the recent modern winemaking innovations of sons Andreas and Bernd Spreitzer who have controlled the estate since 1997. Bernd and Andreas were the Gault Millau’s Discovery of the Year Award recipients in 2001.
Viticulture practices are as natural as possible at Spreitzer and include alternating cover crops of herbs, greens, and lentils in the summer with grains in the winter. The Spreitzers strive to maintain fruit and finesse by cleaning the must by gravity for 24 hours after whole-cluster pressing, then allowing the wines to rest on their gross lees and only filtering once. The Spreitzers employ a long fermentation and extended lees aging to protect the juice from oxidation. Mostly ambient yeasts are employed for fermentation in both temperature-controlled stainless steel and 1200 liter casks of German wood, called stückfass. The resulting wines show great pedigree.
