Grapelive Wine of the Week
By Kerry Winslow
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2010 Weingut Johannes Leitz Riesling “Rudesheimer Berg Roseneck” Rheingau, Germany.
This stellar Riesling is all about terroir and relates its soils to the glass in stunning fashion with bright mineral and intense bracing acidity along with huge dry extract and depth of fruit. Still massively young, but wonderful in flavor and richness with white peach, fresh apricot, green apple and hints of honeyed lime. Johannes Leitz and Eva Fricke are making some of the most important wines of the Rheingau, highlighting the different soils and exposures near Rudesheim above the Rhein, exploiting brown and grey slate, red schist and ancient sea bed soils to amazing effect. This wine is full, Auslese must weight, zinging with powerful acidity and has complex aromas, flavors and a long finish, a true Grand Cru white. Still lots to develop here, so make sure to put a few away in the cellar for as long as a decade if you can! Sweet and tangy with subtle smoke, pineapple, flinty slate essence linger on almost a minute after the last sip. Look for great things from Leitz in the 2010 vintage, and “Rosie” here is one of them.
($49 Est.) 95 Points, grapelive
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