2014 Riesling Forster Jesuitengarten Grosses Gewächs

Sabine Mosbacher-Düringer and her husband Jürgen field a talented team and render Rieslings from numerous top Mittelhaardt sites whose combination of site typicity, refinement and immediate sensual appeal is consistently impressive. The 2014 vintage, with its potential for enhanced acidity and moderated alcohol, arguably played to the Mosbacher strengths. Sabine Mosbacher emphasized the advantage conveyed not only by less September and October rain than in other parts of Riesling Germany, but also by more advanced ripeness, which managed not to encourage excessive botrytis. The Grosse Gewächse weighed in at 13% to 13.5% alcohol but they are not weighted down by it.

Even allowing for serious selection, the estate’s crop came in at long-term average loads. Vinification at this address is with a mixture of ambient and cultured yeasts, mostly in tank, with the single-vineyard wines then being selectively rotated through cask for varying lengths of stay. In contrast with every other German estate I know that bottles wines labeled for rock types or geological eras, the Mosbachers’ serve as a tier ostensibly superior to “Erste Lage” single-vineyard wines and inferior only to their Grosse Gewächse, of which these geological designates effectively serve as “second wines.”