Schloss Vollrads, 'Schlossberg' Grosses Gewächs, Rheingau Riesling 2018

This is stunning wine, from one of the most famous Grand Cru vineyards on the Rhine, already in superb, maturing condition. Dry, structured and intense, this will continue to age for many years (if you let it) and is one of the best examples of fine dry Riesling we have come across in recent years.

This is in VERY limited availability.

Showing layers of flavours on the nose, with ripe orchard fruits, peach and developing notes of cashew nuts, dried herbs, and flint. The palate is surprisingly fresh with richness balanced by supporting, vibrant acidity, complex flavours of lime-laced apple and pair, with a mineral, focussed mouthfeel leading to a long finish. Delicious!

Schloss Vollrads, one of Germany's oldest most-respected wineries, is also one of its oldest, having continuously made wine there since the early 13th-Century. At the forefront of many of Germany's wine-making developments, they were the first winery to produce a Kabinett (the first rung on the rather complicated Prädikat system) in 1716, and have been important members of the VDP, the Germany wine-makers' self-governing quality body. They are consistently excellent and produce wines that are both textbook representations of their grapes and vineyards, while offering soaring quality in their single-vineyard and Grand Cru wines, such as this.

The vineyards are now fully organic, having begun the process in 2017, and the process for modernising (not that easy for an 800-year-old winery) is being handled with sensitivity and in response to the best quality developments available today. These include the installation of gravity-fed fermentation and ageing facilities and renewable power sources. All important changes, no matter how straight-forward they may seem.

In this wine however, the ordinary and straight-forward combine with the stratospheric. Though they adopt a very traditional, low-intervention and seemingly ordinary approach to the Schlossberg vineyard, the quality that they extract in the grapes is sensational. This is something that no manner of modernisation can really improve - it's the know-how that comes from centuries of working out where the best sites for the best grapes are; where the sun ripens Riesling best; which sites can consistently perform, even in poorer vintages. And this is the way that the quality sites have been identified, as they are, say, in Burgundy, and the top producers often share the areas, growing precious rows of vines to the best of their ability.

The Vollrads estate comprises 63 hectares of vines across the Rheingau, and interestingly planted with every known clone of Riesling so that the estate can weather the potential storms of climatic change without worrying about the continuation of wine production - at least some of the many clones will survive heat spikes and floods!

They also have a huge amount of land situated in Grand Cru sites (Grosses Gewächs, like this one) and in most years parts of these vineyards go into making the other wines as well. They are careful, as you'd expect, and use hand-picking and almost zero sulphur, no artificial sweetening or acidification, relying instead on the various microclimates, soil types and altitudes to deliver the variety of quality that goes into the wines that go into the production of the wonderful tapestry of their output.

This particular wine comes from the Schlossberg vineyard, a VDP classified Grand Cru with low-yielding vines that are on average 35 years old, planted in mineral-rich shale and gravel. The vineyard is protected from cold weather elemts by the Rhine itself and  the nearby Taunus mountain range. Like most of the best sites, Schlossberg is south-facing to get the most of the sunshine, which is how they are able to get such consistently high quality, dry wines with great structure and ageing potential.