2022 Riesling, Auslese, Wehlener Sonnenuhr, Joh. Jos. Prüm, Mosel, Germany

AP number 17 23

Big, bold and brawny compared with the Himmelreich Auslese with a smoky note thrown in but all the evidence suggests this will outlast the Himmelreich. Very fine.

Drink 2026 - 2046

Sweet

The 2022 Riesling Wehlener Sonnenuhr Auslese opens with a notion of baked peach, especially baked peach skin, aromatic, slightly caramelized with concentrated fruit. Peach compote sweeps onto the palate, ripe and still with bite, just as cooked peach flesh appears, expressive and sweet but not overdone. This entire flight is a lesson in restraint. The long finish and aftertaste are tempered with citrus, corralling that expressive peach. Lovely, restrained, elegant.

Drink 2025 - 2050

While tightly wound in youth and too nervous to express itself fully, there's a core of sun-drenched peach and yellow cherry lusciousness that pulsates from within here. It's still subtle on the nose, but the palate can't hide the intensity of fruit and swirls of honey and hibiscus nectar waiting to unfurl. Delicate sweetness is balanced by a lifting spray of minerality and a spine of laser-edged acidity. Hold until 2030 at least; it's a wine to enjoy over decades.

Drink 2030 - 2070

Still very youthful on the nose, this is crammed with ripe peach, plus more delicate notes of pineapple and mangosteen. It’s a minor miracle that this kind of concentration can be packed into such a sleek, medium-bodied palate. What an amazing mouthfeel this has thanks to the seamless integration of slatey acidity and ripeness. Very long finish with spot-on balance.

Drinkable now, but best from 2025

Natural cork. Tasted at the domaine from AP 38 21 in July 2022.

The 2020 Wehlener Sonnenuhr Auslese is intense and complex on the still introverted but complex nose that shows clear, bright fruit aromas baby pineapple) intermingled with fine, flinty slate notes. What an aristocratic appearance! Round, crystalline and saline on the palate, this 2020 Auslese is much more openhearted and fruity as well as frisky and frivolous than it pretends to be on the nose. This is a really Catholic Riesling or a picture-book Wehlener Sonnenuhr Auslese. Its finish, however, is Protestant: rigorously linear, straight and with serious structure and grip. All in all, this is the world's most ecumenical Sonnenuhr—pure fascination.

Drink 2022 - 2090