Riesling “vom blauen Schiefer” 2018

The Pünderich local wine »vom blauen Schiefer" comes from the Fahrlay vineyard with 80 to 100 year old vines rooted in the blue slate. The wine is something like a pre-selection of the Großes Gewächs. After harvesting and sorting, the vines receive a certain amount of maceration time and are pressed very slowly with low pressure and fermented spontaneously. Clarification takes place by sedimentation. Apart from small amounts of sulphur in the summer after fermentation, nothing else is added. Maturation takes place in traditional Moselan Fuder barrels of 1,000 litres capacity. The local wines are usually bottled in late spring.

medium straw yellow

The Riesling from the blue slate is always the straightest of the three local wines. Although this bleakness and coolness of the blue slate has softened somewhat in the warm 2019, the character remains present, especially when compared to the red and grey slate. Here, the cool fruit of white and blue currants, limes and grapefruits shows up in conjunction with cool crushed stone and the corresponding smokiness and spice of the slate. One actually thinks one can perceive the blue here.

What is hinted at in the fragrance, gains again in precision on the palate. The Riesling from the blue slate is puristically clean and austere in its combination of smoky stone, dry herbs and blond tobacco, with a cool flow of freshly squeezed lime and salt lemon running through it. There's a hint of white currant here, too, which almost comes off as warm and quaffable when combined with the otherwise cool notes, balancing the austerity of the terroir wine a bit. Still blood young and thirsty for air, this wine has great clarity and elegance, and always high drinkability thanks to the typical salinity this wine always possesses. The tartness of grapefruits contributes to this, which becomes obvious once again in the finish.