April 7, 2017 | News | Issue Highlights | Mature Riesling
Our extensive 1997 retrospective yielded many superb wines, among which a spectacularly vibrant and complete Kabinett by Maximin Grünhaus.
Mature Riesling is one of the great pleasures of the wine world. This is why, every year, we dedicate the Spring Issue of Mosel Fine Wines to this topic in a bid to have our readers try it for themselves.
In the just released Mosel Fine Wines Issue No 34 (Apr 2017), we reviewed over 90 wines from the 1997 vintage, a mature vintage which proves pretty much the dream of any Mosel wine lover coming through.
Among this embarrassment of the riches, the Maximin Grünhäuser Abtsberg Kabinett by von Schubert proved one of the great highlights.
Weingut von Schubert produced a remarkable set of wines in the 1990s. It delivered not one but often several of the vintage highlights in all our annual "20-Years After Retrospectives" which we held over the last years. Two years ago, its sublime 1995er Maximin Grünhäuser Abtsberg Auslese proved an "Issue Highlight."
Earlier this year, we had the chance to re-taste much of the Estate’s 1997 collection and the results were equally impressive. Besides truly remarkable fruity and sweet wines (including the Abtsberg Kabinett featured in this article), the Estate crafted an amazing set of fresh and elegant dry Riesling.
The Maximin Grünhaus Estate is blessed with tending one large vineyard hill which stretches over almost 1.5 km (1 mile). You may be forgiven for thinking that this hill is pretty homogeneous. It is not. The front-middle part (the Abtsberg - highlighted in blue on the picture) has a different soil, as Carl von Schubert points out: “In this sector, the slate is blue rather than red. This differentiation between the blue and the red terroir becomes really sharp and precise as one goes up the hill.”
This bluer element makes for the distinctive signature of wines from the Abtsberg. It adds an elegantly focused and spicy side to the wines when they mature. This distinctive note came roaring through in the Estate’s 1997er Abtsberg Kabinett.
This wine has a touch more body than usual for a Kabinett of the period: 1997 proved a rather ripe vintage and yields were low in the Ruwer. The result is simply spectacular. This is one of the finest elegantly light Mosel Riesling ever made.
There are few Estates whose wines age as beautifully well as those from von Schubert – Maximin Grünhaus. If you do not have a mature bottle at hand, leave a few bottles of the recent releases to enjoy at maturity. You will not regret it.
More mature Ruwer by Maximin Grünhaus
was reviewed in Mosel Fine Wines Issue No 34 (Apr 2017).
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1997er
von Schubert
Maximin Grünhäuser Abtsberg Riesling Kabinett
03 98
95
This beautiful wine delivers a gorgeous nose of cassis, grapefruit cream, spices and herbs. It proves utterly elegant and incredibly youthful as intense and creamy Spätlese-like fruit emerges on the palate. The finish is to die for with layers upon layers of succulently fresh and gorgeous fruit packed in white minerals. This is pure magic in the bottle. Now-2037
© Text by Mosel Fine Wines "The Independent Review of Mosel Riesling ... and beyond!"
Disclaimer: Mosel Fine Wines is an independent publication and has no commercial relationship with any Estate, association or organization featured in this article.
