April 21, 2018 | News | Wines | Mature Riesling
Our extensive “10-Years-After” Retrospective of the 2008 vintage underlined the beauty of this vintage, certainly at the top.
A good start in the 2008 vintage led to a ripening ahead of long-term average, preluding yet another “warm” vintage in line with the 2005-2006-2007 trio.
A cool September and uneven October with quite some rains retarded the ripening process back to long-term averages from the 1990s and 1980s. The harvest of this “retro-vintage” was late and challenging.
We re-sampled over 20 of the finest dry and off-dry Riesling from leading Estates in Germany, Austria and France such as Weingut Georg Breuer, Weingut Emrich-Schönleber, Weingut Hirtzberger, Weingut Keller, Weingut Koehler-Ruprecht, Maison Trimbach, etc.
Overall, the 2008 dry & off-dry Riesling are juicy and fresh but do also show quite some remarkable presence (certainly for a supposedly “lighter” vintage).
At the top, 2008 is a brilliant vintage, one of the finest of its kind in the history of modern German dry wine. Some absolutely stunning wines were produced which flirt with perfection, as we found out.
But 2008 is far from being a homogeneous success. Many wines bring power and surprisingly green-ripe notes.
For all practical matters, the 2008er dry & off-dry Riesling are now all fully open for business, even if many still benefit from a little pre-drinking airing.
The complete 2008 dry & off-dry Riesling Retrospective including our list of highlights and detailed tasting notes for each wine was published in Mosel Fine Wines Issue No 40 (Apr 2018).
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© 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.
