2021 Weingut Haart, Riesling Estate, Mosel, Germany.
Haart’s slightly off dry Estate Riesling is nicely generous and fresh in the mouth with hint of sweetness on the light framed palate, it shows off bright slate driven details and is an easy quaffable style that is very flexible with cuisine options. The main attack gives racy lime citrus, juicy apple, peach and quince fruits, along with crystalized ginger spice, smoky flint stony notes and delicate florals. I tasted this delicious Riesling at Carmel’s Toro Sushi Restaurant, which has an exciting menu and a great German and Austrian wine list, and it was brilliant with some spicy selections and an array of shell fish and raw fish options. This wine saw a slow fermentation in stainless steel tanks as well as some old oak barrels, and as the winery notes, the wine was lightly filtered and bottled 5 months after harvest, to provide vibrancy and purity of form, as seen clearly here in the finished product.
The Mosel’s Haart winery, who’s family’s viticultural tradition dates back to 1337, lies only a few meters from the Mosel river, on, as the winery notes, the romantic, peaceful Ausonius riverbank where the famous Piesporter Goldtröpfchen vineyard begins its uphill climb with classic slate soils and a great Riesling terroir. In 2015 owner Karl-Theo Haart’s sons Johannes and Marcus Haart took over the family business and are continuing their long tradition of ultra steep sloped Riesling wines, creating wines that are expressive, age-worthy and mineral intense. The winery explains that their cool fermentation(s) with natural yeasts, and allowing for some residual sugars, make for wines that are extraordinarily fresh, fruity and balanced even after many years in bottle. It is also notable that Haart employs biodynamic and full organic farming with the vines, on very steep hillsides, all being hand tended and picked, which adds to the energy and quality found in the wines, again, as witnessed here in their basic estate bottling.
($27 Est.) 91 Points, grapelive