Steinmetz Mosel Riesling (Triage Wines) 2008
As with our first ever liter offering for NYC this autumn, we have also selected a separate old-school, dry-tasting Mosel Riesling bottled in 750 ml for Triage Wines, our distributor in the Pacific Northwest. Both wines are adorned with Weingut Günther Steinmetz’s retro label.
The special entry-level bottling for Triage Wines comes from a 0.37-hectare block of Riesling (planted in 1973) in the steep slate section of the single-vineyard Brauneberger Mandelgraben, a forgotten east-facing slope, behind the village of Brauneberg. The site, which runs along a side valley towards the Hunsrück, away from the Mosel River, is a cooler Middle Mosel clime, much like the Saar and Ruwer. In 1963 and later in 1968, the vineyard area was enlarged to include less-privileged, flatter sections deficient of slate. Stefan Steinmetz says that the core Mandelgraben tends to give wines with a pronounced acidity and minerality.
Stefan picked all the ripe grapes en bloc, that is in only one passing, rather than doing multiple passes with selective harvesting. The grapes were lightly crushed and pressed, without skin contact, and fermented with wild yeasts on the lees in two old barrels. Unlike many other Mosel estates’ Gutsriesling—which often come from purchased grapes or even juice, are normally made with inoculated yeasts, and are usually sulfured and bottled quite early—this wine naturally fermented at its own pace and finished with 14.1 g/l residual sugar and 8.3 g/l acidity. The wine has an uncomplicated, lovely purity, nothing forced about it. It’s light in both color and body (10% alcohol by volume). And unlike many other wines in this “category,” it is neither cloyingly sweet nor tartly trocken, and even better, it actually improves while open—a good thing, because the first glass offers what the Germans call Lust auf mehr, or desire for more. Drink up.
November 13, 2009 at 2:07 am
Just recently, while drinking a 1999 Eiswein from Steinmetz I was thinking that I will be sad the day the wonderful Steinmetz label will be replaced by (probably) an ultra-modern sans-serif label, as it is the fashion these days. But this redesign is actually very nice.
November 13, 2009 at 7:24 am
Coincidentally, Anne, who designs our catalog, and I are meeting at Steinmetz next Tuesday to discuss labels. The retro look was an idea I had, but it needs to be fine-tuned for all his wines. I wanted serifs and a certain type of paper, and Stefan had found an old drawing of his house as the logo. That’s when we decided to do a separate retro label for a couple of our 2008 selections.
January 24, 2010 at 6:05 pm
[...] in 1958. And we were fortunate to taste a bottle from this vintage: a 1958 Brauneberger Mandelgraben naturrein from Willi Steinmetz. (On labels naturrein means literally “naturally pure,” and [...]
April 20, 2010 at 3:16 pm
[...] November I tasted and compared Weingut Günther Steinmetz’s 2008 Riesling (halbtrocken) and 2008 Mülheimer Sonnenlay Riesling Spätlese trocken “Alte Reben.” [...]