About this WINE
Schwaab-Kiebel
Schwaab-Kiebel is an archetypal middle Mosel family wine estate, based in the village of Urzig. They have 5.5ha, including vines among the prized vineyards of Erdener Treppchen and of course in the Wurzgarten, which they continue to work by hand, vinifying their wines traditionally in old 1000 litre fuders.
Along with neighbours Merkelbach, the Schwaab-Kiebel family represents the values and qualities of a classic Mosel producer. However Horst Schwaab-Kiebel is scaling back the family’s activity, so these wines represent the last expression of a bygone era; a chance to savour the brilliance of traditionally made Mosel Riesling, with bottle age!
Riesling
Riesling's twin peaks are its intense perfume and its piercing crisp acidity which it manages to retain even at high ripeness levels.
In Germany, Riesling constitutes around 20% of total plantings, yet it is responsible for all its greatest wines. It is planted widely on well-drained, south-facing slate-rich slopes, with the greatest wines coming from the best slopes in the best villages. It produces delicate, racy, nervy and stylish wines that cover a wide spectrum of flavours from steely and bone dry with beautifully scented fruits of apples,apricots, and sometimes peaches, through to the exotically sweet flavours of the great sweet wines.
It is also an important variety in Alsace where it produces slightly earthier, weightier and fuller wines than in Germany. The dry Rieslings can be austere and steely with hints of honey while the Vendages Tardives and Sélection de Grains Nobles are some of the greatest sweet wines in the world.
It is thanks to the New World that Riesling is enjoying a marked renaissance. In Australia the grape has developed a formidable reputation, delivering lime-sherbet fireworks amid the continental climate of Clare Valley an hour's drive north of Adelaide, while Barossa's Eden Valley is cooler still, producing restrained stony lime examples from the elevated granitic landscape; Tasmania is fast becoming their third Riesling mine, combining cool temperatures with high UV levels to deliver stunning prototypes.
New Zealand shares a similar climate, with Riesling and Pinot Gris neck to neck in their bid to be the next big thing after Sauvignon Blanc; perfectly suited is the South Island's Central Otago, with its granitic soils and continental climate, and the pebbly Brightwater area near Nelson. While Australia's Rieslings tend to be full-bodied & dry, the Kiwis are more inclined to be lighter bodied, more ethereal and sometimes off-dry; Alsace plays Mosel if you like.
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Description
As fresh as a daisy, bought directly from this little-known estate in Urzig, whose wines, coincidentally resemble those of neighbours Merkelbach. The red slate of Erden's Treppchen vineyard is exalted in this fabulously focussed 1992 vintage. Taut, vibrant, a hint of slate smoke, very refined with cool white fruit and race! Such is the minerality that it tastes dry/off-dry, with brilliant fluidity, of fresh, early elderflower, along limy slate purity. A remarkable wine and still so young!
David Berry Green
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