Rating:
95
Stephan Reinhardt - Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
"The 2015 Riesling Trocken Haardter Bürgergarten Im Breumel VDP Grosse Lage offers a beautifully pure and stony bouquet of bright yellow fruits and lemon aromas, and comes along almost like a perfume. On the palate, this is a highly elegant and well-balanced Riesling cru with a compact and mineral structure, great finesse and a very persistent salinity in the finish. The wine reveals a well-dosed power and concentration, as well as a great elegance and harmony. It should be aged for at least five years."
Product Description:
"With the 2015 vintage, Müller-Catoir has bottled another excellent collection. The dry wines are probably the best ever produced here and if you still have no relation with Weissburgunder (Pinot Blanc), Müller-Catoir's oak and malolactic-free bottlings could be a welcome chance to change any pre-judgements. The sweet wines are already famous and the 2015s are excellent arguments for this fame.
2015 was a warm and dry year, but the autumn was cool. "It was important to harvest at the right time," says Franzen, who admits that "we didn't run less that in 2014, although the grapes were all healthy in 2015. We just had to avoid too high an alcohol level and broadness." Harvest at Müller-Catoir started on September 7 and was finished in the first week of October for the dry wines. That's a week to ten days earlier than in the last years. Due to the deep soils, with their good water storage capacity, Müller-Catoir harvested the top wines earlier than the basic Rieslings. "Being finished with Riesling at the beginning of October – that never did happen before. Also, we had never harvested the top sites earlier than the estate wines before," says Franzen. So in 2015, they had to find new ways to achieve top qualities.
"2015 is a vintage of the vineyard," Franzen finds. Deep soils and old vines had clear advantages during the dry and warm summer. Also, the organic farming shows more and more results. "The vines, the whole system is more in balance, since we are organic. The single vineyard wines are clearly distinctive. We can also see that in 2015, it was the prestigious grands cru sites that shined." Riesling was picked with higher acidity than expected, whereas Rieslaner's acidity was lower than in 2007 and similar to the levels in 2005, another warm vintage.
Last but not least, 2015 brought good quantities, again. "There was virtually no botrytis and we picked the grapes for our Auslesen in a bilious green color," stresses Franzen, who finds his 2015s in general "warm and dense, yet vivacious and shining from inside." Stephen Reinhardt
Our biggest wine deals. Available by text! Join Winetext.com today!
