2016 Riesling Cuvee Frederic Emile

The 2016 Riesling Frédéric Emile reveals a clear, bright and slightly flinty bouquet with citrus aromas and delicate intensity. Round and elegant on the palate, this is a powerful, intense and complex cuvée with persistent salinity and remarkable phenolic structure. Although this is a rather crystalline and filigreed Frédéric Emile, it still needs some time to show its best talents. This has 13.2% stated alcohol plus almost two grams per liter of residual sugar. Tasted at the domaine in May 2022.

The lemon-sherbet note here is really beautiful. Then comes a wealth of herbs, ranging from thyme to parsley, with a touch of sea salt, before turning to more floral nuances, such as cherries and almond blossom. The powerful acidity seems to surround the whole mouth and makes this almost like licking a lemon; the unmistakable dryness is all the more enjoyable because of it. Long and very elegant on the finish. Drink now.

Luminous straw-yellow. Complex, mint-accented aromas of nectarine, tangerine and powdered stone, plus a hint of licorice. Then bright, juicy and dense, showing outstanding acid-sugar balance and a penetrating juiciness to the stone fruit and herbal flavors. Finishes multilayered and very long, displaying noteworthy clarity and limy cut on the saline finish. Wine lovers everywhere know just how great Frédéric Emile Rieslings can be, but this looks to be a real knockout in the making; I absolutely love this wine’s mineral drive and precision. It pulls off the neat trick of being both very ageworthy and also lovely to drink right now. I was happy to know that my palate was still working after an extremely long day of tasting when I told Pierre that in this vintage of Frédéric Emile I found more of the Geisberg than the Osterberg (in most vintages, the wine is a blend of 60/40 Osterberg-Geisberg, at times even 70/30, but this year it’s more like 55/45).