With the 2023 Grand Cru dry Riesling collection, the Vollenweider estate finds itself, again, at the very pinnacle of the Mosel.
What a young Daniel Vollenweider did a quarter-century ago - to rise out of nowhere to the very top of the pantheon of Mosel wines for his Kabinetts and Prädikat wines - Moritz Hoffman is now doing for Vollenweider with his Grand Cru dry Rieslings.
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Hoffmann took over the estate in 2022, after the early passing of his friend and mentor Daniel Vollenweider. While he has kept the level of the Prädikat wines at the high level Daniel set years ago, it is the quality of the Grand Cru dry wines in the past two years that has been nothing short of a revelation.
With the staggering Grand Crus of 2023 - three separate bottlings from old, ungrafted vines up to and well over 100 years old - Hoffmann cements his place at the most elite level of Mosel winemaking, right next to growers such as Falkenstein, Julian Haart, Egon Müller, Willi Schaefer, and Stein.
These are among the most serious Grand Cru dry Mosel Rieslings we have ever tasted - they are ultra-focused and precise. You have to taste them to believe it.
If you are serious about dry German Rieslings and collect the top GGs of Keller or Emrich-Schönleber, you should consider these wines. Each Grand Cru is unbelievably crystalline, with a mineral-driven core that is polished and sleek, truly statuesque and rigorous. We have complete details on all the wines below.
At the moment, these bottles reveal almost no fruit whatsoever. Hoffmann has somehow tamed the ripe vintage of 2023; the wines have density and weight, yet never feel anything other than perfectly cut.
A warning: These wines are so dense and inward-looking that they truly demand, if you are drinking them young, at the very least a decant. Better yet: Open the wines a day or two before you want to drink them.
For the next few years, it is only after many hours of air that the wines begin to reveal their etched layers and the soaring florality, the vivid brightness of the citrus and stone fruit.
These are trophies that will develop for decades to come. It is quite possible that when we look back in a decade, these will be considered break-through wines for Vollenweider.
Vollenweider's 2023 Grand Crus will arrive in early July. We are working extra lean on three-pack purchases. For those new to this trilogy of wines, perhaps try one of each?
For the collectors who have the room, go as deep as you can. You won't regret it.
To order, email offers@crushwineco.com or call the store at (212) 980-9463.
Joe Salamone
Wine Buyer
Crush Wine & Spirits
2023 Riesling Goldgrube Grand Cru Dry
The Grand Cru Goldgrube is sourced from 120-year-old vines trained on single poles in various parcels of the Goldgrube vineyard. The wine was aged for over a year on the full yeasts in fuder. There is structure, of course, from the old vines and the long élevage, but also a beautiful drinkability and lightness. In 2023, this is so pure, harmonious and balanced. Alongside the deep citrus and herbal tones, there is always a distinctive white flower note in the wines from Goldgrube that contributes to the freshness.
2023 Riesling Schimbock Grand Cru Dry
The Schimbock is a tiny, half-hectare vineyard contiguous with the Goldgrube. It is one of the cooler sections of the vineyard, again with 100-year-old (and older) ungrafted vines trained on single poles. In the past the Schimbock often had more skin-contact and therefore more texture. Hoffmann takes the wine the other way: This is the most cutting, edgy, and evaporative of the collection - the acidity here is incisive. A revelation of a wine: pure mineral, pure Mosel.
2023 Riesling Goldgrube "Aurum" Grand Cru Dry
This is sourced from perhaps the best parcel in the Goldgrube, the site directly around the sign in the vineyard. All of the vines here are well over 100 years old and ungrafted. Vollenweider was only able to secure this tiny parcel in 2016. In 2023, only 300 liters were made (the Aurum was not bottled in 2021 or 2022) - this is one of the grandest, and rarest, wines of the Mosel.
This is a profound wine, deep and statuesque, with loads and loads of herbs and smoke and camphor and power. This is the meditation on texture, extract, and intensity amongst the trio of Grand Cru dry wines. While this is Mosel; there is a grandiosity to the form that recalls the GGs of Emrich-Schönleber and Keller.