2016 EMT Riesling Q.b.A. trocken (Auction)
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EMT is the name of a winegrower family in Wonsheim, a neighboring village of Siefersheim, where Wagner-Stempel is located. In the late 1990s Daniel Wagner purchased a 1.5-hectare plot in the Heerkretz from the EMT family, which is located in the best and steepest part of the classified vineyard. In 2002 Wagner produced his first Heerkretz from this 2,500-square-meter plot and this wine put the Heerkretz onto the map of Rheinhessen's greatest vineyards. Today the Heerkretz has been re-cultivated around this old plot and the best part is today 1.5 hectares in size. The 2016 Riesling "EMT" (Auction) was picked on October 30 and macerated for six hours. Fermented and aged in stainless steel tanks for nine months, this is a pure, fresh and precise dry Riesling with a mixture of ripe white stone fruits, lemons and milled stones on the slightly flinty nose. Lean and mineral but highly intense and super elegant on the palate, with finessed acidity and tensioned harmony, this is a remarkable Riesling with a tight body, finely racy acidity and a long, lemon-fresh and piquant finish. Bottled in July 2017.
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Stephan Reinhardt, Wine Advocate
David Schildknecht, Vinous
More reviews and scores
This auctioned bottling from the first parcel that Wagner acquired in the Heerkretz (for more about which, consult my review of the corresponding 2015) leads with scents of white peach and almond that anticipate the generous juiciness and soothing richness displayed on a satiny, subtly glycerol-slicked palate. The reverberative, near-ineradicable finish – laced with pungent inner-mouth hedge flower perfume and resinous green herbal concentrate – evinces an impression of crushed stone suffusion that manages not to interfere with generous, pure-fruited primary juiciness. Here is one of those gorgeous examples of how one can have density, energy and intense minerality in one’s Grosses Gewächs without sacrificing seductive fruit or humble recognition of Riesling’s first duty to refresh. I have to suspect that this will be the longest-lived of Wagner’s dry 2016s. There were 600 bottles.