2008 Riesling Spatlese, Maximiner Herrenberg, Carl Schmitt-Wagner

Your Price: $16.99

Available Quantity: 27

Quantity:

Vintage:
Format: 750ml
Wine Name: 2008 Riesling Spatlese, Maximiner Herrenberg, Schmitt-Wagner
Vineyard: Herrenberg
Designation:
Appellation:
Producer: Schmitt-Wagner
Varietal: Riesling
Type: Off-Dry White
Country: Germany
Region: Mosel Saar Ruwer
Sub-Region: Mosel
Alcohol:

Tasting note: We had the pleasure of having the Schmitt-Wagner Spatlese for dinner last night(7/12/09) with several friends in the wine trade and it was the white of the night, blowing the barn doors off several more expensive white Burgundies(Red of the night was 1979 Haut Brion, but that is another story). This relatively dry spatlese had a deep, earthy nose with soft succulent fruit. The old school style of the winemaking, along with the acidity of the 2008, render this a more classic wine than some of the more recent riper vintages. Round and luscious with a mouth coating midpalate, it had the weight of a Spatlese and the medium dryness of a Kabinett, making the structured Schmitt-Wagner perfect with our mixed seafood tower of shrimp, crab, lobsters and oysters, grilled seafood or your tuna ceviche.

Many miles away in the sleepy Mosel village of Longuich, lies the Maximiner Herrenberg vineyard, not to be confused with the similarly named Ruwer vineyard. Herrenberg was owned by the monastery of St. Maximin then secularized by the Napoleonic wars, when a member of the Schmitt family purchased the vineyard for the hefty sum of a hotte(appropriately a large wooden grape box) filled with gold coins. Unlike many other estates with diverse vineyard holdings, the Schmitt family has focused solely on this prized vineyard over the years of only 3.7 hectares that is 100% ungrafted pre-phylloxera Riesling dating back to 1896, yielding a production of only 3,000 cases total across all the pradikat levels combined. The beautifully complex soil is a mixture of younger blue Devonian slate and older grey weathered slate, where ancient vines combined with traditional vineyard practices make for low yields. The wines undergo long cool slow fermentations from traditional yeasts in large old oak casks and minimal handling with only one racking. Winemaking on the estate is now done by their neighbor Karl Loewen, but Carl Schmitt remains active on the estate. They share the philosophy that purity in winemaking clarifies the spiciness of this terroir: Old-fashioned in the best sense, the penultimate of elegance.