Maximin Grunhaus Herrenberg Riesling Grosses Gewachs 2018
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Winemaker Notes
Herrenberg’s distinctly red slate soils deliver a wine with extra texture and richness. Bright, bristling aromas and flavors of red apple, yellow peach, rhubarb/cranapple and bespoke green herbs and minerals. Really classy dry riesling from one of Germany’s most heralded vineyard sites.
At its best with elite seafood like fresh oysters, cracked crab, steamed lobster, Eastern scallops.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Quite shy at first on the nose with some poised honeycomb, dried-jasmine, five-spice and dried-papaya character. Full-bodied and very spicy, this has a discernible sensation of off-dryness, but the acidity is balanced and agile.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2018 Maximin Grünhaus Herrenberg Riesling Trocken GG offers a more intense and fruity bouquet compared to the Bruderberg GG and reveals toasted bacon notes along with pure stony aromas and concentrated Riesling fruit. Rich and juicy yet well-structured and very mineral on the palate, this is a firmly structured baby of a GG that needs a long time to unfold its talents and reduce its baby richness and fruit.
Rating: 93(+?)
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Wine Spectator
This shows great purity to the notes of guava, quince blossom and nectarine, with baking spice and leesy accents lingering in the background. Offers slight grip midpalate, adding to the firmness and intensity. Beautiful, but needs time to soften up. Best from 2023 through 2035.
Other Vintages
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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.