Every year when I go to the Mosel, I always look forward to my visit at the estate of Gunther Today I can proudly offer the 1994 Licht-Bergweiler Brauneberger Juffer Riesling Auslese (375 ml) for $23.99 a half bottle on 3-pack. You will never, ever find a better deal for a well stored half bottle of Aged Mosel Auslese. It s not and will never be possible. And in the quantities I have. A half bottle Stefan opened 2 weeks ago blew me away. Every bottle of the '94 I drank I thought , "hmmmm how would that be in 5-10 years?" Now you all (and hopefully me) get to have that opportunity. The wine is sick. This ranks with some of the greatest sweet wines I have had. It is elegant, chiseled and with wonderful and opulent fruit but all the acidity '94 is known for. Like many great wines, it is delicious but also fascinating to drink with many secondary and tertiary flavors that appear and recede over the course of an evening. I won't bore you with a list of them. Unless someone brings perfectly aged DRC or the like, this will be the wine of the night. Here are my tasting notes over a 5 day period from March of this year from a 750 ml.Day 1: So complete. Nose is heaven. Honey. Apricot, slate, funk. So deep on the mid palate and ripping '94 acidity. Long pure and complex.
Day 2: Better
Day 3: Even Better
Day 4: Ridiculous.
Day 5: Gone.
Steinmetz, run by the Mosel genius that is Stefan Steinmetz. Stefan is approaching King-like status in the Mosel and his 2015 whites and 2014 reds are brilliant as usual (I don't sell those - a good friend does at my introduction) but the wine I am offering today, is the result of Stefan's King-like connections in the Mosel. He gets offered stuff no one else does. I have already offered this wine twice in 750 ml format and everyone has been startled by the quality and the price. The storage as well is about as good as it gets. It was marvelously youthful in 750 ml format and had 20 more years of life ahead of it. Alas those 750's are gone, but I have something even better! 1/2 bottles of the same wine from the same cellar!
What do Gentaz-Dervieux, Claire Dau, Raymond Trollat and Schloss Eltz all have in common? They all made terrific world-class wine and they all do not exist anymore. Surely there must be more estates beyond these that were the bee's knees and then hung it up for one reason or another? Of course there are. Licht-Bergweiler was one of the great old estates of the Mosel. They were firmly in the 2nd tier behind JJ Prum and Willi Schaefer. The wines were spectacular old school Mosel style. Kind of like Steinmetz crossed with Willi Schaefer.
At under $24 for a split, this is a steal. But they are liquidating the estate and I got a great deal. Old Prum Auslese goes for $100 and up and this is maybe a skooch behind in terms of quality. It's that good.
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