95-97 Stephan Reinhardt - Robert Parker's Wine Advocate

"Served from the decanter as a barrel sample, the 2014 Riesling Uhlen R 'VDP Grosse Lage' from the Roth Lay plot offers an intensely fruity and lovely flinty/smoky bouquet, with mango flavors and very fine slate and herbal aromas that indicate great purity and intensity. Full-bodied, rich and round on the palate, with a lot of finesse and tension, this is on its way to develop into a beauty that combines contradictory attributes: richness and concentration with purity, density with finesse, and power with elegance. The finish is highly promising. This is one of the Mosel wines of 2014 you shouldn’t miss! His 2013s were already great, but Reinhard Löwestein's 2014 Rieslings from Winningen and Hatzenport in the Terassenmosel are simply outstanding, and belong doubtlessly to the very best in the whole Mosel valley. They are all dry and much more precise and stimulating than in former years when botrytis was more tolerated than it is today. It's a miracle how brilliant and tension-filled the 2014s are, although there was a lot of rot as well in the Terrassenmosel. Since Löwenstein does not use any botryticides, healthy grapes zones are extremely important and need fussy vineyard work throughout the vegetation period. It's Reinhard Löwenstein's special provocative humor when he says, "2014 was an easy vintage: You just had to throw away everything that was brown. Most of these grapes were already vinegar. As a result, we yielded 30 hectoliters per hectare, whereas normally we aim for 60 hectoliters per hectare." The grapes were picked in small boxes (which are still rarely seen in the Mosel) between September 25 and October 28. We were 30 people and our selections resulted in no more than 1,000 liters at the end of each day." The boxes were cooled down before the grapes were being processed. They were macerated for 12 hours on average and pressed during eight hours before the musts were fermented with indigenous yeasts in 2,400 to 3,000 liter oak casks in between two months. They were kept on the full lees before being racked at the end of June of the following year, and bottled at the end of July. With young cellar master Kathrin Starker Reinhard and Conny Löwenstein, they seem to have a top solution for the future of the estate, which the couple brought up from almost nothing to world-class level in 37 years. Since their daughter, Sarah Löwenstein (whom I saw interning at Zind-Humbrecht last summer) has already signalized to take over the future of Heymann-Löwenstein, the beautiful modern winery between historic houses seems to safe. The domaine has somewhat reduced its holdings and cultivates 12.5 hectares of Riesling and a bit of Pinot Noir (see the spectacular Pinot co-production with Hanspeter Ziereisen that I reviewed in the last issue #222) in steepest, mostly terraced, horizontally lined vineyards with high-density planting in Winningen and Hatzenport.