This is easily available in the UK, so I would guess you could get it in the US. I highly recommend it, it’s quite the drink. Best six-pack I have bought in ages. Well… I do not buy many six-packs… Ah well, I suppose I mean I am chuffed as ninepence to have five more bottles of this (now in storage).
I am extremely fortunate that a friend bought me six bottles of Kabinett of the same vintage, which is nicer than this, but not as good. However, it is a bargain and has years and years of quality drinking in it, so I also recommend that if you cannot stretch to this beauty. If I get around to drinking another soon, I will post a note of that as well.
The 2022 Auslese was sold out, so my wonderful associate thought he should buy some 2021 Auslese instead! Ho ho ho! It is nice to know kind people. I is good to be kind oneself, of course - I gave him a couple of bottles of Stark-Condé Oude Nektar Cabernet Sauvignon that I have just written up (top bunny stuff!) as he is a bit of a Cabernet drinker. The 2021 Auslese has gone straight into storage, so no notes for a few years.
Riesling Felseneck Spatlese Goldkapsel 2022, Weingut Schäfer-Fröhlich
Popped and poured straight from the fridge.
It is a little reticent at this low temperature, but it is obviously ripe, with peachy, apricot fruit as well as the more usual Riesling lime and lemon characteristics – both quite voluptuous here. I only get hints of the slight nutty aroma I usually identify with Nahe wines – just on an initial sniff it would be easy to mistake this for a ripe Saar wine.
So, a taste…
SMACK! I have driven my palate into a massive wall of acidity! It is purifyingly, penetratingly, petrifyingly painful – oh it is so good! This acidity is not so much ‘glisks of afternoon sunlight’ as ‘mid-day sun intensity focussed through a magnifying glass so it makes your skin melt and boil’ (do not ask for more information but, believe me, I know this pain). It is asterine in its precision, mind-wiping in its clarity. How utterly brilliant!
Behind this firebrand of an experience, there is just discernible sweetness and plenty of ripe fruit. There are a lot of slate-y characteristics too. Straight from the fridge like this you would say, “Jesus Christ! This is an Egon Muller or Peter Lauer Auction Kabinett… but… it is better? Really? YES!”
You see, despite the searing, terrifying, delicious acidity, it is extremely finely balanced. The Editor claims that really fine wines have an uncompromising element to their balance – a ‘terror balance’, as he likes to call it. This has that going on, oh yes! Oh yes it does!
As it warms up I get more of that Nahe nuttiness on the nose and more fruit and minerality show both there and on the palate. A touch reductive too? Yes. It is dazzlingly complex and stunningly long. With the intense acidity it seems superficially dry and sapid but, without too much imagination, you can feel sweetness there. Amazing essence of Spatlese.
This is the nec ultra plus Nahe Spatlese experience; properly fruity, pleasingly slate-y, complex to a delightful level and fearsomely acidic. Yeah.
I have had some great wines this summer but, by arse, none of them as arrestingly, refulgently, arousingly brilliant as this. Beg, borrow or steal to have a taste.
Get some, make your teeth fizz, enjoy with great delight!
Anon,
Davy.
), and your notes increases my expectation of it.
