2017 Willi Schaefer "Graacher Domprobst" Spätlese - Holy shit!

2017 Willi Schaefer “Graacher Domprobst” Spätlese #5

Holy shit! Spectacular juice.

What a purity, elegance, balance and lightness of being “Leichtigkeit des Seins”. Beautiful to drink right now, but of course with BIG potential.

Buy as much as you can. nectar of the gods

95/100

Gin Gin,
Martin

Will look for it here. Great wines for sure!

Can’t you say the same thing every vintage since he started the “5”?

Sounds amazing! I wouldnt expect anything less!

YES YES YES

But the 2017 version is really something special.

Let’s have a look what Mosel Fine Wines has to say about this Spätlese:

“The 2017er Graacher Domprobst Spätlese AP 05 displays a magnificent and beautifully expressive nose of yellow peach, smoke, aniseed herbs, almond, raspberry and much more. The wine shines through its gorgeous depth and intensity on the palate. A racy but juicy and ripe acidity makes for a stunningly focused, pure and smoky feel in the long finish. The after-taste is tight and incredibly pure. This mindboggling Spätlese in the making only needs a decade to show its full potential!” 2027-2057

96/100

Thank you for the TN. It took me a while to get deep into German wines, and that happened with the 2007 vintage. The excitement over 2017 Schaefer tops pretty much any advance gossip I have heard about any producer in any vintage in the past 10 years. I ordered early on the retail bottlings, and bid aggressively for the auctions Friday. Fingers crossed all gets here given how low production was.

Next you will telling people about the great Domprobst Kabinett in 2017 as well. (Oops.)

Don´t worry, Spätlese is enough.

Sounds great!

I am only a newbie with German Rieslings but is the 2017 vintage better than 2016? I thought 2016 was a really great vintage, even better than the very heralded 2015 vintage?

2016 is really a good vintage. Thanks to climate change we had no bad vintage in the last years.

It depends on your taste. 2016 shows more fruit and 2017 shows more clarity,purity, precision and freshness thanks to to the huge acidity. Fair to say that the quantities are much lower in 2017. In case of the estate Keller 40-50% less due to frost and hail. Also in case of the estate Willi Schaefer much lower in comparison to 2016. But there are estates like R. Weil in Rheingau there is only 10-20% less.

Vintage generalizations are tough and very local, often producer by producer. I haven’t tasted 2017s yet to know, but sometimes vintage judgments on release turn out wrong or to evolve.

2016 was quite exciting in the Saar and Ruwer, more compact than 2015 but very vibrant, delineated, and pure.

Two producer examples elsewhere.

I liked 2015 Schaefers as a collection better than 2016 (and in the Mosel), and wine by wine, although I have learned not to discount any vintage at Schaefer. The quality is consistent and at the highest level.

I liked 2016 better than 2015 at Donnhoff in the young wines because of the delineation of the 2016s. I thought the 2015s were too big and diffuse for my taste. But time will tell.

Luckily pricing for the quality has remained stable so you can see for yourself. Also there will be personal reports from the Trier auction over the next couple days, which is another set of data points on the vintage.

I recently enjoyed the 2016:

2016 Willi Schaefer Graacher Domprobst Riesling Spätlese #5 - Germany, Mosel Saar Ruwer (9/15/2018)
A stop-everything-and-check-this-out nose: Apricot, lime, lime blossom, crushed stone. Round, rich, balanced palate with flavors of apricot and an energetic, mineral line from first sip to finish. This is absolutely fantastic. Hard to resist today but the 2016 Graacher Domprobst Spätlese #5 will evolve positively for many years. (94 pts.)

The transparency and raciness of the 2017s are likely even more my style, but hard to resist the 2016 today.

I also had the Spätlese #10 recently. Probably better in 2016 than in 2017; more austere, more mineral, less forward fruit:

2016 Willi Schaefer Graacher Domprobst Riesling Spätlese #10 - Germany, Mosel Saar Ruwer (9/18/2018)
Pale. Spectacular nose of pear, peach, lime blossom, and crushed stone. Crisp, balanced sweetness and acidity, light body. Compared to the #5, the #10 Spätlese is less forward with the fruit but shows a stronger mineral core. Like the #5, this is irresistible today but the potential is large. (93 pts.)

Agree with this. While I haven’t tasted broadly in 2016, I couldn’t believe how good von Schubert’s 2016 Abtsberg Spatlese was. I haven’t had the 2015 but honestly I can’t imagine it possibly being any better.

I had the opportunity to taste the range of 2017s yesterday. The G-D kabi is out of this world. I liked the G-D spatlese quite a bit, but the auction version - the 13 - was a clear step up for me.
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