2014 Wehlener Sonnenuhr Riesling Auslese

The 2014 Riesling Wehlener Sonnenuhr Auslese (AP #20) opens with a deep, pure and stony lime and grapefruit bouquet, indicating a high ripeness and intensity. Concentrated, piquant and very elegant on the palate, this is an expressive, complex and compactly structured Sonnenuhr Spätlese with a very long and mineral finish. Impressive in its finesse and mineral expression. Dr Manfred Prüm says, "2014 was a very expensive harvest. We made a brown harvest when we negative-selected all rotten grapes. We had to do a pre-selection because the maturity of the berries on one grape was not homogenous. Therefore, we picked the top vineyards rather late. We started the main harvest after ten days, since the acidity levels went down. So we accepted 20% to 25% of green grapes and 5% of noble rot. Towards the end of the harvest we picked the noble botrytis grapes, which was again a selection between rot and noble rot." The result of the 2014 harvest contains Kabinett, Spätlese and Auslese Rieslings including the Gold Cap from the Graacher Himmelreich. There is no Auslese from the Zeltinger Sonnenuhr in 2014 "because there was simply no time to select it." A good Auslese has been picked in the old, steep part of the Bernkasteler Lay and there the Badstube a Spätlese and Auslese were selected. In Graach, there was more noble rot in 2014 and team JJ Prüm picked this vineyard at the latest.