Most high end riesling is either sweet (8-9% alcohol) or grand cru but dry (12-13% alcohol).
I find myself enjoy off-dry styles the most - the sugar helps balance the acidity but it’s not so sweet as to taste like 7up. I love 10% alcohol riesling. I find kabinetts too sweet even when marketed as off-dry.
My favorites so far are:
Peter Lauer Barrel X
Donnhoff riesling (the basic bottling is off-dry)
Today I also ordered:
Peter Lauer Riesling Ayler Kupp “Stirn” Fass 15
Peter Lauer Riesling Ayler Kupp “Kern” Fass 9
But it seems like there’s nothing of this style at the high-end?
Something that I can spend $80-100 on?
I find this a bit weird - isn’t Kabinett just a prädikat for the level of ripeness and has nothing to do with residual sugar? You can have a Kabinett that is virtually zero in residual sugar and then you can have a Kabinett that is clocking in at 100 g/l RS - and anything in-between. Or has this changed recently? I’ve always thought you just need to know which producer makes their Kabinetts at which level of RS, not look for different Prädikats or other qualifiers.
Yes, the Kabinett category is very broad. In practice the Kabinette feinherb tend to carry 40+ g sugar; unless explicitly labeled as Kabinett trocken it is by default in the fineherb territory. Halbtrocken is capped at about 20.
Kabinett is a Prädikat with a minimum must weight of 73 degrees Oechsle (formerly 70 degrees Oechsle) for Mosel Riesling. So you can have a Kabinett with 90 degrees Oechsle and 80 grams of sugar per liter.
Normally Kabinett Feinherbs are between 10 and 25 g/l. Can’t remember ever seeing a Feinherb above 30 g/l. Care to link any examples?
It is true that unless the label explicitly says Kabinett trocken (ie. max 9 g/l in RS), it is going to be at least somewhat sweet. However, in my experience, the wines today are almost always sweeter than Feinherb and seldom clock in at Halbtrocken (max. 18 g/l) or Feinherb territory.
Furthermore - I can’t remember when I saw a wine labeled as Halbtrocken. If a wine is off-dry, they are almost invariably labeled as Feinherb, if something; not Halbtrocken.
At Falkenstein, Kabinett feinherbs tend to have between 20 and 30 grams of sugar per liter. As always, the total acidity and pH value play an important role here.
Weil, von Buhl, Breuer, Kuehn, Krebs… And hundreds of others. Admittedly not the most prestigious category, the supermarkets are full with those.
But if you apply the filter low alcohol + not much sugar, that’s where you land.
On the other hand “Kabinett feinherb” is not that common. Most producers leave it at Kabinett, which implies a nontrivial amount of sugar.
I believe that the minimum must weight for Mosel Riesling Kabinett was lowered back to 70 degrees Oechsle for the 2024 vintage.
Yes, “Kabinett feinherb” is not common, and most Kabinetts not designated as “trocken,” “halbtrocken,” or “feinherb” have 40 or more grams of sugar per liter.
Of course CT might give a somewhat skewed perspective, since it is so USA-focused, but there are currently about 1600 Kabinett feinherb Rieslings and 2200 Halbtrocken Rieslings in CT. Even though Halbtrocken seems to be somewhat more common, I think the difference in popularity between these two categories is still relatively small.
And as Maciej said, I think a considerable amount of wines labeled Halbtrocken are inexpensive supermarket stuff. So if one wants wine with not much residual sugar, I think feinherb Kabinett Rieslings are going to offer more interest and quality than wines just labeled “Riesling Halbtrocken”.
Also fully agree with Lars that if a Kabinett doesn’t have any additional designation, in all likelihood it is going to have +40 g/l RS today.