Stunning German Riesling

At Elitistreview the quest for pleasure does not end for trivial reasons such as it being half four in the morning, if quality is on offer we will jump in to enjoy it. This is a bottle of serious quality Riesling.

The reason I am up at half-four is that my often-present insomnia is playing merry hell with nights at the moment. However, this night has been a good one as it is being illuminated by editor Daniel staying up to join me through the long hours. Most likely he has done so purely to stop me from whining about how lonely the endless nights seem. No matter, I still appreciate his efforts and I really appreciate the bottle that has been popped to jolly the morning up a shade. Half-four suddenly seems a good time to be awake.

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Riesling Kabinett Graacher Himmelreich 2007, Willi Schaefer

This has a livid, expressive nose of lime fruit and slate-minerality. It is exceedingly vibrant, stunningly pure and totally thrilling in terms of its multi-faceted array of aromas – there is not only comeliness but also real complexity to this nose. When you catch German Rieslings at the right stage of youthful exuberance their charms are so obvious that even the tedious, drearily hard-of-enjoyment types who say wine with residual sugar is bad cannot fail to be smitten: when they smell such as this their interest is piqued, when they taste it they are bewitched. That being said, this seems slightly drier than I recall it tasting at my last encounter. For sure there is residual sugar present, but such is its balance with the other characters of the palate that sweetness as such does not seem an idea one needs to float – the whole experience is a sophisticated entity of total harmony. The persistence of flavour is remarkable and its complex fruit/acid interplay charms me unconditionally. I talked the neighbours, my mother and several other friends into buying this deeply affordable little beauty and feel I have done them all a great service in doing so. If they share the odd bottle with me over the long, lewdly enjoyable life this promises to deliver I’ll feel even better.