November 14, 2017 | News | Wines | Vintages
We look back at noble-sweet Riesling in the 2016 vintage and share our list of not-to-be-missed vintage highlights.
2016 was not a vintage for botrytis and this reflects on the style and quality of its noble-sweet wines. Very little BA and hardly no TBA was produced. However those produced by the likes of Weingut Fritz Haag, Weingut Dr. Hermann and Weingut Max Ferd. Richter are terrific.
2016 turned out a classic vintage for Eiswein as Mother Nature offered several occasions to produce this frozen gold, including comparatively early, at the end of November. Weingut Markus Molitor produced Eiswein perfection and the finest noble sweet wine of the vintage.
But also the other specialists including Weingut Karl Erbes, Weingut Egon Müller, Weingut Max Ferd. Richter, Weingut von Schubert and Weingut Selbach-Oster crafted some of their finest Eiswein ever.
A special mention goes to the up-and-coming Weingut Blees-Ferber. After landing its TBA on our list of noble-sweet Riesling highlights in 2015, the Estate underlines its skills again in 2016 with one of the finest Eiswein of the vintage.
The fact that the fruit was clean, the acidity moderate (even if still quite good) and the aromatics ripe made the production of refined Auslese a quite tricky affair in 2016. 2015 proved here the overall better vintage.
Nonetheless, some stunning Auslese of extraordinary purity was made (often in tiny quantities) by a whole string of top growers, whereby Weingut Fritz Haag (who produced the Auslese of the vintage), Weingut Markus Molitor, Weingut Schloss Lieser and Weingut Max Ferd. Richter achieved to land two of their wines on our list of vintage highlights.
Many of the finest Auslese are Auction wines, and hence often (very) pricey. The stunning quality of the Bernkasteler Doktor Auslese by Schloss Lieser proves the vintage's finest outside of the Auctions. Unfortunately, also this wine was only produced in tiny quantities.
As we explained in our overall assessment of the 2016 vintage in Mosel Fine Wines Issue No 35 (June 2017), the 2016 vintage is stylistically not very homogeneous. Some wines are fresh, others riper. These huge stylistic differences apply particularly to the Auslese category. We recommend you to have a close look at our tasting notes in order to make sure the wine suits your style.
We provide here the Eiswein, BA and TBA highlights from the 2016 vintage (for the number lovers: potentially 96 pts or more at maturity).
We provide here the Auslese highlights from the 2016 vintage (for the number lovers: potentially 95 pts or more at maturity).
Our detailed reports on the 2016 vintage (Issue No 35, Issue No 36, Issue No 37 and Issue No 38) will help you to navigate through the offers of Kabinett on the market as they provide detailed tasting notes for over 1,000 recommended wines from over 100 different Estates.
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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.
