Description
Frank and Doris Meiser now run winery having taken over from Frank’s Dad Eric who I have been buying from for 38 years. Eric was the 1st winery I imported from and his red Dornfelder has been my top selling wine for all that time.
The Riesling grapes are harvested late on in the season producing more sugar and extracting more minerals and nutrients from the soil. there are 5 levels of harvesting for QBA wines – Kabinett, Fully ripe, Spatlese Late harvest, Auslese even Later, Beerenauslese left so long the are starting to go mouldy and Trockenbeerenauslese Dried up mouldy grapes, sounds disgusting but this is Botrytis cinerea (“noble rot”) , this concentrates the flavours and many vines are used for 1 bottle. What is interesting is that Frank adds a little bit of Beerenauslese juice to Auslese thus raising the profile of the wine. Resulting in an exceptional Auslese.
The Riesling with its natural acidity, like Sauvignon Blanc and this high sugar level are fermented and before the fermentation process is finished the process is stopped, leaving residual grape sugar in the wine, this gives a sweet finish but the acidity pulls back the apparent sweetness and keeps the wine fresh for many years (10 +) . It makes what I call the Lemon meringue pie effect, sweet meringue and sharp lemon together in a wine. This wine is drinkable from the 1st year but develops over many and now is just getting into its stride. A magnificent example of a classic Rhein Riesling.