Riesling Nonnengarten Grosse Lage “Birnbaum” Reserve Fass 37 2015

This wine is part of the exclusive Vinaturel vintners' edition with the VDP vintners Kühn, Busch and Luckert. This is a Riesling from a top vineyard, which is released as a reserve wine only after 36 months of storage in wooden barrels and in the bottle.

The Nonnengarten site is classified as a "Große Gewächse" and belonged to Marienburg before the land consolidation. The old field name of this extremely steep, south-facing grey slate parcel was "Unterm Birnbaum". Interestingly, the wine actually impresses with ripe pear aromas across vintages. It is fermented spontaneously and aged in 1,000-liter barrels.

pale straw yellow

Clemens Busch's Rieslings have become more and more pure and - if you like - radical in the last few years. The Pear tree is a nice example for it; because here one can notice in the relation of nose to palate which blatant differences there can be. On the nose, the wine is fine and suggests creaminess. It comes across as a creamy, yellow-fruited melange reminiscent of nectarines and stewed pears, dressed with citrus and red berries on a bed of crushed spicy slate. The Pear tree makes an extremely elegant impression.

On the palate, precise, freshly sharpened crisp acidity permeates a whole basketful of ripe windfall fruit. Pears and apples are crumbly and smell as if they've just burst open on a wet slate while someone sprinkles a little salt over the fruit. To combine these crumbly notes with this kind of razor-sharp precision, to make the wine seem crystalline and floating, to allow it a bit of tannin while charging it with elegance and complexity ..., you have to do it first. But Busch is a master at it.