Riesling Alte Reben, Nelles, 2007, White wine from Germany

5 points

Please find my previous reviews of wines from the Nelles winery here: https://avdwineandfood.net/2015/05/02/1-ahr-spatburgunder-nelles-2010/ and https://avdwineandfood.net/2015/06/07/b-52-spatburgunder-nelles-2006/. Since you will find a lot of  information about Nelles there, here I will concentrate only on the wine.

Although the lovely valley of the small river Ahr is further north than Mosel, this wine region stands for the best red wines. White ones are rather rare.  Soil almost in the entire valley is mostly schist.

Bild0914(1)It was surprising that I still managed to find some bottles of this good, but not outstanding, Riesling – as the 2007 vintage, according to Captain Cork, (http://www.captaincork.com/) was a pretty good one. I remember when I opened the last bottle, maybe four years ago. The wine still has a nice, elegant balance between, on one side, fruits like peach, apricot and mature – even sweet – pineapple (probably because of the age) and one the other side petrol and the classic minerality of schist. Acidity is rather modest, which makes the wine a bit heavier and creamier than comparable Rieslings.

During the first sips, I thought the wine might already be too old; after an hour’s airing, it became better and better. Taking into consideration that the wine isn’t either a so-called Große Gewächs (German description of Grand Cru) or famous because of its vineyard, I express my compliments to the winemaker: very solid white wine quality, made in Germany.

I don’t know how long Nelles has been using plastic corks. I am still very skeptical about this material and believe more in a screw top. It would be interesting to see how the wine would taste maturing in a bottle with a natural cork. Would it be better?