Schafer-Frohlich Felseneck Riesling GG 2018 750ml

Very pure slate here, this is something unique. The elevated, steep and stony site has such strength of character, delivered with such purity. Gun smoke, gunflint and very fine fragrance with a streak of fresh lemons. So fine. The palate has a super fine and elegant feel, floating ballet-like over the palate. Such elegance and power. The finesse and length is really ethereal. Yellow-grapefruit juice and pith here. Wildly succulent at the long, salty finish. What a thrilling wine. Drink or hold.

Bright and clear fruit aromas intermix with flint stone and herbal aromas to open the spectacularly deep, dense and coolish, extremely mineral 2018 Felseneck Riesling GG. Very intense, rich and concentrated on the silky-textured and refreshing palate, this is a crystalline and silky yet dense and enormously mineral, tightly woven, dry and piquant Riesling with remarkable tannin structure and sustainable salinity. This Felseneck needs years to open up and also the biggest glass you can find. Tasted during the VDP Grosse Lage preview in Wiesbaden in August and two times at home in October 2019.

#90 in Top 100, 2020. A very expressive, medium-bodied version, with lots of flesh, offset by powerful acidity that gives this ample energy and drive. Notes of jasmine, hops, yellow plum and kumquat impart charm midpalate, while hints of shaved ginger and lemon oil linger on the long, well-defined finish. Best from 2023 through 2036. 500 cases made, 56 cases imported.

Zesty lime and struck flint pungency are joined on the nose by intimations of white currant and white peach as well as of alkaline, saline sea breeze. The midpalate is firm but polished, dense and full (at around 13% alcohol), yet exhibits an improbable sense of lift, with crunchy, taut-fruit freshness and cheek-pinching brightness such as one seldom witnesses from this vintage. The superbly focused, preternaturally persistent finish is vibrantly tongue-tingling, crushed-stone-saturated, mouthwateringly saline and refreshingly loaded with primary juiciness. Yet for all of the brightness on display here, there are also resonant, deep, piquant nuttiness and a low-toned stoniness suggestive of tectonic tension. "Based on my impressions in autumn [2018]," said Fröhlich - lovely though he claimed the harvest was - "you could never have gotten me to believe that we would end up with a wine like this." And talk about the scarcely believable: Fröhlich left out of this cuvée a roughly thousand-bottle lot of Felseneck that was due to spend a second winter in cask, and which he thinks represents his finest dry wine of the vintage. Like its Stromberg counterpart but to an even more striking degree, this bottling illustrates a point on which I elaborated when introducing the Schäfer-Fröhlich 2017s - namely, that Bockenau's top slopes take a back seat to none on the Nahe.

A 7.5 hectare vineyard of blue Devonian slate, basalt and quartz.. No added yeasts. Healthy grapes means less SO2 and this hovers around 43mg.