2015 Marienburg Riesling Falkenlay Grosses Gewachs

This offers a gorgeous and comparatively airy nose of bergamot, candied lemon and herbs. The wine is elegant and well balanced on the palate and leaves a beautiful intense feel of minerals in the long finish. This vibrant expression of dry Mosel Riesling should develop nicely at maturity. Sep 2016, www.moselfinewines.com, Drink: 2020-2035

This is still very funky and opens up very slowly, but there’s great concentration from the first great surge of peachy fruit to the tightly knit intensely mineral finish. In spite of all the power, it feels virtually weightless. A stunning wine if you’ve got patience. Sep 2016, www.jamessuckling.com

From gray slate, the 2015 Pündericher Marienburg Riesling GG Falkenlay is pure, yet deep, intense and flinty on the nose. On the palate, this is a very intense, round and juicy Riesling, charmingly round and mouth-filling, with lush and intense fruit, great purity, finesse and mineral tension in the persistent finish. It is bottled with 7.1 grams of residual sugar. || 2015 was "a super vintage," says Clemens Busch. "We had a perfect vegetation period and a perfect autumn. The flowering was early but very good, with just a bit of color. The summer was hot and dry but in September we had a bit of rainfall, which was perfect for the grapes. We started harvesting on September 25 and we finished November 11. During that time we did not have any rainfalls and harvested perfectly ripe and healthy grapes. We selected for several styles and quality classes and could really do what we wanted to do – except of noble sweet wines. There was simply not enough botrytis, so there is nothing above Auslese in from 2015." Nevertheless, 2015 was the best yielding vintage since 2011 at Clemens Busch. The wines have high extracts and ripe acidities, are concentrated and very clear. "Since I wanted to keep the wines clear and lean, I sulfured earlier than usual to avoid the malolactic fermentation. If it occurs in the last weeks of the fermentation the wines tend to get too broad. I prefer a leaner, purer, fresher and stimulating style for our grands crus, though," explains Clemens. The alcohol weights of his 2015 grands crus are between 12 and 12.5%, only Raffes and Felsterrasse, both from extremely steep and warm spots and absolutely spectacular in 2015, finished at 13% alcohol. There have been many great 2015s produced at Clemens Busch and even the recently released 2014s are more than positive highlights of this difficult vintage. Feb 17, www.robertparker.com, Drink 2019-2035