Scharzhof Riesling, Weingut Egon Müller 2015

This offers a gorgeous nose of pear, cassis, melon and herbs. The wine is delicately rich and powerful but overall zesty. The finish is almost off-dry in taste and still backward, but also full of potential. This is really best left alone for a few years to allow it to develop its full inner balance. It will then be a superb off-dry styled wine which transcends the notion of Estate wine. 2018-2025

I learned on this trip that the superb estate Riesling from Weingut Egon Müller includes a sizable chunk of Saarburger Rausch in its blend, as the estate has a fine parcel in this vineyard that they choose not to bottle on its own. While part of my heart yearns to taste a Rausch bottling from Egon Müller, the realization that a significant percentage of the blend of this fine villages level bottling is from such a grand cru vineyard makes this wine even more attractive. The 2015 is a stellar wine, offering up a pure and classy nose of apple, lime, a touch of cress, a beautiful base of slate and a gentle topnote of petrol. On the palate the wine is fullish, pure and vibrant, with lovely nascent complexity, bright, zesty acids and outstanding focus and grip on the very promising finish. This will need a few years in the cellar to develop some of its secondary layers of complexity and should age long and gracefully.