TN: 1998 Dönnhoff Oberhäuser Brücke Riesling Auslese Goldkapsel

  • 1998 Dönnhoff Oberhäuser Brücke Riesling Auslese Goldkapsel - Germany, Nahe (1/15/2022)
    #20-99, 9% abv. From half-bottle. This is easily the best bottle of the regular Brücke Auslesen I’ve ever had, and also easily one of the best “ordinary” Auslesen I’ve ever had too. Simply incredible. A mild hint of petrol on the nose, followed by lime, lemon grass, and makrut lime leaf, but with a roundness and sweetness of fruit that whets the appetite for the wine to come. The concentration almost numbs the palate. There is so much extract and flavour packed into this wine it’s almost impossible to pick apart, but there are flavours consistent with the nose, as well as notes of very clean botrytis and an intense minerality that Hermannshöhle doesn’t tend to have. Sweetness that is perhaps more in line with modern incarnations of Auslese, the intense and ripe acidity renders this far too easy to drink quickly. The half-bottle gets finished far too quickly. (98 pts.)
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I am glad you noted it as the “regular” Auslese. The CellarTracker notation of these wines as “Goldkapsel” ticks me off.

In fairness, the capsules are gold, at least nowadays. Plenty of white-cap wines in the early 2000s though.

I’ve spoken to the folks at CT about it before, it’s a constant battle against the ignorance of users who insist on labelling the Doennhoff wines as GK, even though no such distinction has ever been made at the weingut.

The same issue exists with Willi Schaefer.

The white cap wines were not Brücke or Hermannshöhle.

Anyway…lost cause.

So Donnhoff never uses the Goldkapsel designation?

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Not as such.

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All the Dönnhoff wines go to eleven.

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