2023 Weingut Spreitzer, Riesling Kabinett, Lenchen, Rheingau Germany.
Again, as I’ve mentioned before, after focusing more on the old vine and dry wines, including the fabulous set of GGs at Spreitzer in my reviews, I noticed I hadn’t mentioned often enough, one of my favorite wines in their lineup, the delicious Lenchen Kabinett, and that is an almost unforgivable oversight on my part! This aromatic and bright lighter bodied pre-release sample of 2023 shows lovely potential for the vintage with radiant slightly off dry crystalline fruits, including white peach, green apple, honeyed lemon and hint of pineapple, along with lime blossom, rosewater, ginger spice and green tea. The Lenchen parcels, part of the VDP Grosse Lage (Grand Cru) Oestricher Lenchen vineyard, overlook the widest part of the Rhein and this area gets an almost lake effect climate, warmer and moist, usually allowing for high sugars and early ripening grapes, making for flexibility in picking so the Spreitzer’s can make a wide array of styles from the Grand Cru dry Grosses Gewachs to a lush and intensely sweet Auslese, as well as this traditional Kabinett. The Spreitzer team used a combination of old fuder (German oak cask) and stainless steel tanks to ferment and lees age the wines here, with the Lenchen Kabinett exclusively seeing stainless steel, to retain fresh detail as well as give texture, which this vintage manages to convey to near perfection, making for an ideal Kabinett Riesling. This is a wine that is both fun and quaffable along with having complexity to thrill the senses and goes brilliantly with food, classic German dishes and especially spicy Asian cuisines like Thai.
One of the oldest family wineries in the Rheingau, Weingut Spreitzer, which I visited in 2016, is located in the tiny hamlet of Oestrich in the middle Rheingau is run now by Andreas and Bernd Spreitzer, who took over from their father Josef in 1997 and have really done an amazing job elevating this historic estate. One of their prize holdings, is the Lenchen Vineyard with its VDP Grosse Lage Rosengarten being the elite parcel here, it is set on mostly of gravelly loam and loess soils and not far from the Rhein and the winery itself. There are numerous underground streams here that ensure that even in dry years the vines have plenty of refreshment and a natural source of water for the roots to drink up. During my visit with Andreas in the 2016 harvest period I got a chance to see a lot of his vineyards and tasted in the ancient cellars and in the modern tasting lounge the Spreitzer’s have. It certainly was a fantastic experience and a beautiful place that I recommend to visit when you tour the Rheingau region. The whole area should be on your short list of paces to taste when in Germany and Spreitzer is not far from some other famous spots like Kloster Eberbach and Schloss Vollrads, as well as being close the Geisenheim University and just up Rhein River from Rudesheim, one of the Rhein’s most picturesque villages. I was thrilled to catch up with Andreas Spreitzer earlier this Summer and taste through his upcoming releases, including this deliciously pure Lenchen Kabinett, all of which were outstanding efforts that are reason for excitement and the 2021 and 2022 vintages are already tremendous wines, with the Wisselbrunnen GG being a monumental and profound dry Riesling.
($24 Est.) 93 Points, grapelive