A bargain of stunning quality

Really Piesporter Goldtröpfchen Riesling Kabinett 2018 – Schloss Lieser are not immune to the current fad of just putting just vineyard names on their wines.

Fine, if it is as recognisable as the name of this glorious site or, say, Chambertin. Some growers do it with vineyards even an informed buyer would have difficulty locating. I realise you must be proud of your excellent plot of Breumel In Der Mauern, but help us out here, guys!

Furthermore, if Prum sold a Riesling Sonnenuhr, where would it be from? Wehlen (ideally), Zeltingen (unfortunately) or a blend (luckily, I am sure ‘Shouting’ Manfred Prum would not let his daughter do that to us!).

Finally, the world is, alas, filled with idiots. They may be thinking they are getting wine from a spectacular plot of land when they are buying a shitty Bereich or (far, far worse) an unspeakable Liebfraumilch! The Horror! So just be careful, boys and girls, ok?

Goldtröpfchen, then, a brilliant plot that is wonderfully exposed to get a maximum amount of sun on its vines. Drops of gold are said to grow on it.

The vineyard filled me with terror as I once drove up its vertiginous slopes on a single track road I had seen lorries flying down all day. It was unbelievably steep.

Consequently, it is great fun to get a Kabinett from this sunny site. This is the least ripe Pradikat, making racy, nervy, edgy wines of incomparable freshness and charged with energy. Not much sugar, but lovely, lovely acidity that makes one feel all the thrills of having car jump-start cables being run over one’s fillings.

2018 is a brilliant vintage. The wines are ripe but have retained great acidity. Everyone is raving about the Auslese wines, but Kabinetts are what you want.

I am so looking forward to trying this! Are you ready? Let us commence!

Picture of bottleRiesling Kabinett ‘Goldtröpfchen’ 2018, Schloss Lieser

Good god, what a nose! It is an incredibly focussed beam of precision, strung to an incredible degree of nervy tension. How thrilling! How exciting!

This piercing, penetrating point of power exudes tightly bundled, intense packets of gloriously sun-slathered fruit – pink grapefruit, mango, passion fruit, pineapple, papaya – all this gloriously exotic fruit whilst never losing a scintilla of its pure elegance and refinement.

There is a powerful, slate-y minerality as well, intertwined with all that lovely fruit, tied up with a candied like concentration and a character that makes it clear this wine will be joyfully, wonderfully charged with delicious acidity and limitless, lively purity.

Wow. WOW. This smells so good I almost not dare taste it. Almost…

Pow! Zap! Wehay! What a palate!!

It is off-dry, a true Kabinett, and that helps the flavours of the ravishingly exotic fruit expand to fill your palate. The same kind of fruit that was on the nose, these lovely sensations are sapid and exciting whilst being nicely plumped-up by this Goldtröpfchen Kabinett being in its very young ‘puppy fat’ stage of is evolution. The fruit is light-years beyond attractive.

Associated with the truly winsome fruit one gets a feeling of astringency at the sides of one’s palate, as if one is getting a taste of the fruit skins as well and the fresh flesh of the fruit. This adds to the incredible harmony of the wine.

Then there is the stunning minerality that infuses the wine. It is a powerful, profound slate-y character, fulsome in character but completely in balance with the tight-knit intensity of the wine.

The slate flavours give the palate a grip. A taut intensity that tells you this wine will never become flabby, no matter how long you age it (assuming your cellar is up top the job).

Acidity is one of the main parts of the fun with a Kabinett, one wants them fresh and crisp. Even though the Goldtröpfchen is a sun trap that produces ripe grapes, and this is a reasonably ripe Kabinett, not a molecule too much of acidity has been ripened out of this Schloss Lieser example.

It has the focus and precision of multiple lasers aimed at a microscopic glass bubble of helium in order to initiate fusion in the bubble. To say this was an effulgently active virtual reality erotica codpiece would be massively downplaying the energetic thrills one gets from it. It is this acidity that makes this Schloss Lieser Goldtröpfchen 2018 a true Kabinett of exquisite poise and perfect balance.

These features do not exist as discrete entities. Rather they are bound together in a seamless whole. That creates a synergistic magic of its own.

Firstly, as I have stated, all these characteristics exist in perfect balance with each other. The harmony is faultless. Secondly, and more impressively, their interaction creates a savoury, almost dry character that you feel in your cheeks and on your gums as you swirl it around your mouth.

I like such savoury characteristics in wine. They speak to me as marks of a really classy wine. These savoury qualities persist and persist, along with all the other flavours and sensations present in this Goldtröpfchen Kabinett 2018, for an amazing amount of time after you have swallowed it. The finish is long and exquisite.

This wine is of supreme style and quality in every possible manner one can analyse wine. It is a glimpse of a timeless world of near perfection. It seems a shame to mention money when one is dealing with wine of such coruscating beauty, but this is probably the best bargain I will ever recommend on Elitistreview. The quality/price ratio is incalculable.

The cost and vendor? A highly affordable £15.50 from The Wine Society. Act very quickly, it will sell out fast.


The Editor and I tasted this very carefully, discussed it fully, analysed its every detail and finished the bottle in 9 minutes and 39.6 seconds.

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