2016 Weingut Von Schubert-Maximin Grunhauser, Riesling Feinherb, Monopol, Mosel, Germany.
It’s impossible not to love this beautiful dry style Riesling from Maximin Grunhaus, it is bursting with energy and slate driven terroir with Ruwer character and exceptional purity. This stuff is such a great value with a light/medium palate of mineral intensity showing lime, green apple, tart apricot, grapefruit and lemongrass along with salty wet stone, flinty spices and a delicate floral perfume. Riesling Monopol is a unique cuvée, which is close to dry and comes from mostly old vines belonging to the Von Schubert family at Maximin Grunhaus, with a bulk coming from their famed Herrenberg Cru, a site benefits from deep soils with good water retention, over a base of red Devonian slate and the Abtsberg, where the subsoil is blue Devonian slate and the hillside runs south-east to south-west, achieving a gradient of up to a staggering 70% slope above the Ruwer river. Crisp with just a hint of generous residual sugar the Maximin Grunhauser Monopol delivers a fine performance in the glass with it’s pale and bright golden/green hue and goes wonderfully with Asian cuisine as well as more traditional fare gaining a touch of earth and verbena with certain foods, it’s great to enjoy now, but can be aged for many years.
($22 Est.) 92 Points, grapelive
