2023 Dr. Loosen Urziger Wurzgarten Alte Reben GG Riesling Mosel 3pk 3x750ml

Most of the vines that made this wine were planted before World War I. That is not marketing. That is the vineyard.

Ürziger Würzgarten is the strangest great site on the Mosel.

Where the rest of the river runs on blue-grey slate, Würzgarten is a blazing red amphitheater of weathered volcanic rock, iron-rich enough to color the whole hillside. Germans call it the spice garden, and once you smell what it does to Riesling you stop arguing with the name.

Dr. Loosen's parcel here sits directly behind the village, still known by its old name, Urglück, planted to ungrafted vines over 120 years old on original rootstock. Phylloxera never took hold in the Mosel, so these vines were never grafted onto anything. They are the real thing, still on their own roots.

Erni Loosen took over the family estate in 1988 and spent the next three decades proving that the Mosel could make serious dry Riesling, not just sweet. Grosses Gewächs is the German answer to grand cru: an estate's best dry wine from its best classified site. This is his.

The winemaking is deliberately hands-off. Fermented with wild yeast in traditional 1,000-liter Fuder casks, then left on the full lees for twelve months with no stirring. That gives you texture without weight. It finishes dry at 8.7 grams of residual sugar against 7.1 grams of acid, and it carries only 12.5% alcohol, which is why a glass of this wakes your palate up instead of flattening it.

Drink it now with something rich and it will cut straight through.

Put it away for five years and it will be a different, better wine. Either way, this is what the Mosel is capable of when nobody takes a shortcut.