May 15, 2019 | News | Wines | Mature Riesling

2009 Retrospective | Riesling | Mosel | Label

2009 Fruity & Noble-Sweet Riesling | A Progress Report

Our extensive “10-Years-After” Retrospective highlighted the crowd-pleasing nature of the vintage for fruity and noble sweet Riesling. Here a summary.

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 racy and elegant 2008 vintage last year, we took on the riper 2009 vintage this year.

2009 Fruity & Noble-Sweet Riesling | Growing Conditions

The 2009 growing season proved quite a roller-coaster with early bud break, uneven flowering, dry summer and wet start into the autumn.

Fears of a remake of 2006 following the rain at the beginning of October were appeased as cold weather and even frost set in soon thereafter. Most of the harvest was done under good weather, allowing late harvesting Estates to bring in grapes until well into November.

2009 Fruity & Noble-Sweet Riesling | The Crowd-Pleaser

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.

2009 Riesling Vintage Retrospective | Mosel Fine Wines | Picture | Bild

The 2009 wines are much more open for business than the 2008, 2007, 2006 and 2005 at the same period.

As we mentioned upon release in Issue No 12 in July 2010, the Spätlese and Auslese are the sweet spot of the 2009 vintage. These can be superbly pure. But there is hardly any real Kabinett to be found in 2009! Some superb noble-sweet wines were produced, but quantities are tiny.

Clearly, the cooler Saar and Ruwer have the edge over the Mosel.

On the downside, the warmth of the vintage reflects itself in the petrol notes which have appeared in some wines.

Overall, 2009 perfectly complements the racy 2008 vintage: It is a big and overtly fruity vintage, full of crowd-pleasing qualities.

2009 Fruity & Noble-Sweet Riesling | Detailed Tasting Notes

The complete 2009 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 45 (Apr 2019).


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