Riesling, Kastanianbusch, Grosses Gewächs, 2018
The great Kastanienbusch vineyard rises from 150m above sea level to over 300m and is formed of red iron rich soils that are around 320 million years old. It tends to produce complex powerful Riesling that is nevertheless transparent and full of energy. Aromas of smoky cherries, raspberry and red iron rich slate soils dominate this broad, open, multifaceted GG Riesling in 2020. The minerality here is salty and ferrous, the fruit both red, crunchy and littered with herbs and grasses. The finish pulsates with intensity – this is Riesling that tastes like little else in Germany.
critic reviews
The 2018 Kastanienbusch Riesling GG is a long-lasting and promising wine with a vintage-appropriate opulent but precise and elegant nose with deep, bright fruit and terroir notes of rocks and herbs. It's very clear and precise, wrapping the generous ripeness in a cool robe. This is intense and quite powerful on the palate, dense, juicy and firmly structured but with elegant, fine and stimulatingly salty thanks to a delicate interplay of acids. It has spicy, intense length with herbal notes and lemon bitters. Tasted from magnum at the Rebholz Kastanienbusch/Christmann Idig/Wittmann Morstein vertical tasting in Westhofen in August 2024.
Pear and mango offer a very ripe aromatic and palate impression, alluringly garlanded in iris and peony, then reinforced by the glycerol-richness that Rebholz takes to be characteristic of 2018s. Nutty piquancy and an underlying sense of wet stone serve for welcome counterpoint to the effusiveness of fruits and flowers and emerge on the finish with pith and even an unexpected hint of austerity. This bottling should be fascinating to follow.