Wine Reviews

A rich, succulent Riesling, with yellow peach and passion fruit gilded with subtle warm baking spice notes, all wrapped around a firm spine of salinity and crushed slate. Honeyed and creamy in feel, with white tea tannins reining in the lushness, plus echoes of smoke and straw. Delicious now and also built to age.

The 2024 Riesling Sommerberg Grand Cru is from the well-drained granite of this steep site. Fragrant citrus zest and lemon imbued with aromatic bergamot overtones are heady with all their charms on the nose. This exquisite fragrance carries over to the palate, where smooth stoniness is pure, charming and uncompromising at once. It is lithe but concentrated, direct and crystalline, and wonderfully straight and energetic. (Bone-dry)

A wonderfully smoky sense of flint speaks of the delicious and promising reduction with a sense of crunchy, tart red apple. The palate is serene and slender, with granitic verve, cut, depth and a marked stoniness that is so enticing.

The August hailstorm hit the 2022 Riesling Sommerberg Grand Cru, which meant 50% of the crop was lost and concentrated the rest. This is from a granite site with more topsoil. Gorgeous white and yellow peach are perfumed on the nose, just edged with peach skin and citrus. The palate is absolutely pristine, so clear-cut, bell-like in its purity. It just flows. Despite its relative Niedermorschwihr mildness, the 2022 is precise, balanced, bone-dry and supremely juicy, with more lovely peach skin on the finish. (Bone-Dry)

The very youthful, slightly flinty nose barely hints at the beauty of the more open, medium-bodied palate, which has concentrated, extremely fine and nuanced peach fruit. Then comes gigantic stony minerality that drives the super-long and focused finish. Limited production due to hail damage to part of the producer’s holding. From biodynamically grown grapes.