Thanks.
Goldkapsel Auslese
Some German producers designate special bottlings with a gold capsule.
German winemakers, being German, very precisely described their wines. Many used descriptors such as fein, feinste, ect. to stratify their wines. These descriptors became illegal in 1971, and so some producers started using capsules. Schloss Johanisberg and Vollrads used different colored capsules for years. JJ Prum is the most well known with their ausleses having white capsules, gold capsules, or long gold capsules. Other producers use stars. One problem, there is no standardization so one just has to remember which producers use which system. Donnhoff uses gold capsules on all their ausleses.
And it is also worth knowing that some producers just happen to use gold capsules on their “regular” Ausleses! I.e. they don’t make two versions.
And some, like J.J.Prum also make a LGK Auslese! (Long Gold Cap)
And then there are also the “Auction” wines (designated by a special small neck label) - typically very small lots of very high quality wines made especially for the annual wine auction events in Germany, now just social events that celebrate the “old days” when virtually all wines were sold by negociants and purchased from the growers at annual auctions. These will typically be something like 2x the price of the regular Auslese and GKAs. So some producers, like J.J.Prum may make 6 Ausleses in a good vintage…! (All have different A.P. numbers which legally identify the different lots).
Auslese
GKA Auslese
LGK Auslese
Auction Auslese
Auction GKA Auslese
Auction LGK Auslese
Wow, thanks. Tricky stuff.
Willi Schaefer and J. J. Christoffel (to name a few) use gold capsules on all of their wines, not just auslese.
And Eric - Donnhoff has used white capsules on auslese from the Dellchen and Leistenberg in 2001 and 2003.
Often gold capsules or long gold capsules (or other designations) are used for auslesen that are richer (grapes with higher must weights) than the regular ausleses. In many instances, the weight and richness of these wines is closer to BA than to the regular auslesen. There are some wineries that use the special designation for wines for other reasons - an especially cherished portion of a vineyard (for example, Selbach now specially designates specific parcels of a few of his wines by name (eg., Rotlay for the special Rotlay portion of Zeltinger Sonnenuhr)), old vines, etc. However, it is most typical for the designation to be used for richer auslesen.
many mosel producers use gk for botrytis-affected wines, to distinguish them from auslesen not affected by the noble rot.