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"Somehow, at first whiff, the wine is both wild and pure (not that these two things are necessarily incompatible). It is wild because this is fermented with spontaneous yeasts (as is everything at Weiser-Künstler this year, aside from the dessert wines) and pure because, well, the Ellergrub is one of the finest sites on the Mosel. This wine smells of blue slate, which is something like mineral water with a little more… er, mineral? There is a brooding depth of ripe fruit, tensile and coiled, an almost mango-ripe flavor that isn’t quite there and yet still, somehow triggers the salivary glands to start going. The overall profile is darker, more pregnant than the Gaispfad Trocken. The nose may be the only place where the vintage shows itself, because the palate has great brightness, transforming the purple-red of the nose into bright orange and yellow. The wine flaunts a piercing minerality, blue slate that is saline and saturating, yet also focused and lean. This is a masterpiece of a wine, though still brutal and for the more advanced Riesling drinker. The Ellergrub Spätlese Trocken tends to come from the terraces, from un-grafted vines between 55 and 100-years-old. With these old vines, the fruit develops the slowest, enjoying long hang-times, yet remaining healthy. In 2011, the wine was harvested at 93 Oechsle with seven grams of residual sugar and 7.3 grams of acidity." -Importer