May 28, 2018 | News | Wines | Mature Riesling
Our extensive “10-Years-After” Retrospective underlined the beautiful ripe racy classicism of the 2008 vintage. There is much to like in this vintage whose wines offer much fun.
Mosel Riesling blossoms as it matures. Every year, we dedicate the Spring Issue of Mosel Fine Wines to the beauty of mature Mosel. This includes the largest "10-Years-After" Riesling retrospectives made anywhere in the world. After the pure and ripe 2007 vintage last year, we took on the cooler 2008 vintage this year.
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 100 wines, sometimes whole collections, from the likes of Geltz-Zilliken, Fritz Haag, Schloss Lieser, Egon Müller / Le Gallais, Joh. Jos. Prüm, Willi Schaefer, von Schubert, etc.
While the 2007-2006-2005 trio was about sweet wines, 2008 is about fruity Kabinett and Spätlese. 2008 has developed into a bigger and ripper version of 1998, THE under-rated vintage from the 1990s, with some of the structure of the 1988.
The Mosel has a slight edge over Saar and Ruwer, with a few Estates producing some of their finest collections ever. Overall, most of the wines are starting to become enjoyable now.
We were quite upbeat about the vintage when young (it was the first vintage which we covered in detail for Mosel Fine Wines) ... but it turned even better than in our dreams!.
The complete 2008 fruity & noble-sweet Riesling Retrospective including our list of highlights and detailed tasting notes for each wine was published in Mosel Fine Wines Issue No 34 (Apr 2017).
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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.