2018 Okonomierat Rebholz - Birkweiler Kastanienbusch Riesling Spatlese Trocken Grosses Gewachs

The 2018 Kastanienbusch Riesling GG is a long-lasting and promising wine with a vintage-appropriate opulent but precise and elegant nose with deep, bright fruit and terroir notes of rocks and herbs. It's very clear and precise, wrapping the generous ripeness in a cool robe. This is intense and quite powerful on the palate, dense, juicy and firmly structured but with elegant, fine and stimulatingly salty thanks to a delicate interplay of acids. It has spicy, intense length with herbal notes and lemon bitters. Tasted from magnum at the Rebholz Kastanienbusch/Christmann Idig/Wittmann Morstein vertical tasting in Westhofen in August 2024.

Pear and mango offer a very ripe aromatic and palate impression, alluringly garlanded in iris and peony, then reinforced by the glycerol-richness that Rebholz takes to be characteristic of 2018s. Nutty piquancy and an underlying sense of wet stone serve for welcome counterpoint to the effusiveness of fruits and flowers and emerge on the finish with pith and even an unexpected hint of austerity. This bottling should be fascinating to follow.

A very spicy nose with dried cloves, garlic, jasmine and earl grey tea. Hints of smoke and cardamom. Superb density, but also focus of acidity and citrus flavor on the palate, which is medium-to full-bodied and long on the finish. Drink now or hold.