2016 Riesling Alte Reben

The 2016 Riesling Alte Reben offers a clear, intense and flinty bouquet of perfectly ripe and fleshy Riesling intertwined with very fine slate aromas. Highly elegant and very mineral on the palate, this is a complex, firm, still a bit austere but promising Riesling with a pure, crunchy and very persistent finish with minty flavors. This is surely a long-distance runner and should be kept under cork for at least another 5 to 7 years. Great finesse and elegance here. The finish is extraordinarily long and fresh. A great wine from old vines cultivated in several "premier crus" along the Saar. Tasted in March 2018.

This originates with some ancient and theoretically superbly-situated vineyards, inter alia within the Wiltinger Klosterberg, Wawerner Ritterpfad and Kanzemer Sonnenberg. But once again this year, I find the results decidedly more formidable than they are charming, and the wine almost too dense and muscle-bound for its own (let alone the typical Riesling lover’s) good. But it’s certainly impressive in its way, and perhaps I need to taste some examples that have had a few years in bottle. Juicy white peach is laced with piquant pit and grapefruit rind and suffused with dusty crushed stone in a strikingly forceful aromatic and inner-mouth assault. Although this boast the same under-12% alcohol as other van Volxem bottlings, there is less sense of buoyancy, an impression directly connected with palpable density. The forceful, gripping finish delivers an impressive load of stone as well as pit-inflected peach and cherry, but lacks the transparency to nuance found in this estate’s more successful offerings.