Showing 1-10 out of 10 items
Hide All Tasting Notes
Ready, but will keep,
Need an introduction to the famous wines of JJPrüm? Here’s the perfect ticket: a crystalline, lime & spring water beauty that grounds its white peach succulence with a lick of river stone minerality. Delicate, enticing & far too drinkable, weighing in at a delicious 9% abv! Drinking now.
(David Berry Green)
(David Berry Green)
Donnhoff,
Ready, but will keep,
Helmut sees 2009 as a seminal year for dry/trocken German wines. He recounts that ten years ago the customer & consumer was not prepared to pay for premium fruit with which to make a dry wine, so hence Helmut picked accordingly. Now they are, he does; the result being a focused yet gentle wine, ripe with lemon, lime, even grapefruit flavours, backed with a hint of smokiness that rises from Felsenberg’s volcanic soils. Relish the scintillating lime tang & savour the wine’s ripe fluidity. 5 grams RS. Drinking now till 2019.
(David Berry Green)
(David Berry Green)
Donnhoff,
Ready, but will keep,
Vinified as per the other wines in a combination of old 1200 litre German Hosch wooden barrels/fuders & stainless steel, the Brucke Spatlese glows with an extra 5% botrytis. The later harvest brings more ripeness but also retains great purity of lemony fruit that caresses the palate. I love the way this wine ebbs & flows, just like the river (Nahe) alongside which the vineyard lies – it’s famous for its Eiswein too! Residual sugar is at approx 75 grams yet it seems like half that, such is the lifting acidity. Drinking till 2019+.
(David Berry Green)
(David Berry Green)
Donnhoff,
Ready, but will keep,
Leistenberg differs by being on site, on purple slate, & based on older vines. The result is a wine which shows real confidence, depth & assurance, allied with stunning ‘watery’ minerality – the sense you get when you either lick a slate stone or smell if after a rain shower! Perfect balance even with 30 grams of RS. Drinking till 2019.
(David Berry Green)
(David Berry Green)
Ready, but will improve,
Brooding power that comes from vines with an average age of 42-50 years old, couched amid meaty minerality. The palate is characterised by an oily, grasso texture, yet at the same time being delicately embroidered with floral. Dare I say it’s got perfect pitch? Approximately 80 grams RS.
(David Berry Green)
(David Berry Green)
Donnhoff,
Ready, but will keep,
This sites higher up the purple slated slope facing Oberhauser & comes packed with more botrytis (approx 10% or 2 berries per bunch). The rockier soil & aspect bring a more structured, compact, emphatic wine with layers of sweet limy fruit, stones & spring water minerality. The quality of the vintage is such that the vineyard character still shines through. When tasting this wine Helmut compares to those of the 70s (71), when he vinified in 100% wood; he says it would be too warm to do that now, hence the stainless-steel element. Drinking from 2019!
(David Berry Green)
(David Berry Green)
Donnhoff,
Ready, but will keep,
Such is the demand for Donnhoffs wines that hes starting buying fruit from neighbours; this time from the Anhauser family in Bad Kreuznach just round the corner from Oberhausen. Quartz pebbles & a warmer mesoclimate as closer to the Rhine (than the cooler tribs), makes for a four-week earlier harvest giving a spotlessly clean, fresher fruitier style of wine; the way it dances lightly on the palate makes it a spring wine. Its very immediate, for drinking now but will age too.
(David Berry Green)
(David Berry Green)
Showing 1-10 out of 10 items
The wine's prickly pungency is further reflected on the palate, yet along side is a suggestion of creaminess as well as salted caramel and honey from the subtle botrytis concentration that was present before these grapes froze. More viscous and superficially sweet than the A.P. #35, this simultaneously projects intense acidity, even if - as Donnhoff suggests - some acid fell out after the first day's freeze.
Perhaps that effect - or the wine's embryonic state - accounts for the absence of the vibratory intensity that rivets attention on A.P. #35. We have here the same 7.5% alcohol though from more than 20 additional degrees Oechsle because, explains Donnhoff, the yeasts simply couldn't manage any further conversion. For unifying botrytis with frost concentration, and for sheer palate persistence, the elixir in question here is nothing short of phenomenal. "In 20 years," contends Donnhoff with a wry smile and a nod toward this Eiswein, "Cornelius may be able to beat me."
96/100 points, Wine Advocate, Feb 2011