Critic ratings
robert_parker
2018
Rating:
95
–95
Bottled, like all the crus, at the end of July 2019, Breuer's 2018 Rüdesheimer Berg Schlossberg Riesling is very precise but intense and aromatic but also flinty on the nose, where tropical fruit aromas are currently displayed but intermixed with flinty notes. On the palate, this is a juicy, linear, pure and mineral, tightly woven and tensioned dry Riesling of great class and style. It's much less fruity here than on the nose, and the finish is vital, tight and salty but most of all mineral and almost bursting of tension. Exciting and highly promising. The 2018 is not showing a lot today, but it's promising a lot. Bottled with 11.7% alcohol and one gram of residual sugar. Tasted in August 2019.
robert_parker
2017
Rating:
94
–94
The 2017 Rüdesheimer Berg Schlossberg Riesling is still a bit oaky at this early moment but clear, bright and fresh on the nose. The attack on the palate is quite racy, but this lean and elegant Rüdesheim Riesling is a densely woven, tight and concentrated, very mineral and crunchy Berg Schlossberg with a piquant and tightly woven finish. This promising 2017 is far too young to be enjoyed in the next five years.
robert_parker
2015
Rating:
94
–94
Aged two years, Breuer's 2015 Rheingau Riesling Rüdesheim Berg Schlossberg is extremely pure and "dusty" at the moment, and the stony (flint stone) notes dominate the fruit and give the wine an extremely mineral expression. Intense and round yet super pure and salty on the palate, this is a complex, finessed and elegant Berg Schlossberg with a long, persistent, tightly structured and stimulatingly salty finish. Keep it for another 3-5 years, at least. Tasted December 2017, so unfortunately, I didn't taste it alongside the Berg Roseneckm which I scored even higher two months earlier.
robert_parker
2011
Rating:
92
–92
At 12.5% the highest in alcohol of this year’s Breuer cru-bottlings (whereas it was the lightest of them in 2009), their 2011 Rudesheimer Beg Schlossberg Riesling delivers aromas of nose-wrinkling but pleasant pungency suggesting gunpowder green as well as smoky black tea, accompanied by lime peel and peach kernel, all of whose counterparts on a generous palate offer welcome counterpoint to the wine’s underlying lushness of texture, and complement a delightful sensation of shimmering interchange with stony, crystalline and saline mineral nuances. Peach, fresh lime and almond form the core of a sappy matrix that persists through a vigorously sustained finish, well-supported by about eight grams of residual sugar, which is the level at which all of this year’s Breuer crus stopped fermenting. “We were shocked when we got the analyses,” notes Teresa Breuer, “to discover that the sugars were that high.” I’d say it’s clear on the basis of taste that these wines knew what was good for them! Plan to follow this one through at least 2022.
The Breuer family has bottled a host of formidable collections over the decades, but I must say that Theresa Breuer and her team have very lately been on a roll. When I visited her in the third week of September, 2011, the Riesling harvest was already in full swing even as it rained intermittently. Thankfully, that rain soon stopped definitively, and in the end the Breuer Riesling harvest was not entirely finished until almost a month later. Relatively early picking, though, has typified this estate ever since I began visiting it in the mid-1980s, and young Theresa Breuer was quite confident that her viticulture regimen in 2011 would guarantee longtime cellarmaster Hermann Schmoranz fruit of more than sufficient ripeness and health, a confidence that the results in bottle more than bear out. “Yes we picked earlier, but,” she points out, “the entire season was early. Then it cooled off; we didn’t have to select nearly as laboriously as we had anticipated, and the wines have kept a certain freshness precisely because we started earlier.” That’s hardly the half of it: these wines’ remarkable levity by contemporary dry German Riesling standards – not to mention the standards of recent Rudesheimer Berg wines or the vintage – is coupled with ravishing complexity and vintage-typical sheer generosity. And that last trait is not one I usually associate with youthful Breuer crus. Virtually all of the 2011fruit was pressed directly to enhance clarity and vivacity; only that from Rauenthal plus a very few Rudesheim lots having received brief pre-fermentative skin contact.
Imported by Classical Wines, Seattle, WA; tel. (206) 547-0255
robert_parker
2007
Rating:
89
–89
Brine-like salt and alkalinity greet the nose from Breuer’s 2007 Rudesheimer Berg Schlossberg Riesling trocken, which offers an extreme concentration of saline, oceanic mineral characteristics along with peach and peach pit, grapefruit and lime. There is more juiciness and flesh to the fruit here than in its two rather forbidding and distinctively different fellow 2007 Rudesheimer Berg bottlings. This will be well worth revisiting over the better part of the next decade.
I was extremely curious to see how the normally early-harvesting Heinrich Breuer and Hermann Schmoranz would approach this vintage in which the overwhelming consensus among growers was that the fruit must – despite its remarkable head start – hang late. But by the time I tasted their collection, it was evident that Rudesheim’s slopes were – depending on one’s view – blessed or cursed by having ripened much earlier and more precipitately than nearly any other German Riesling vineyards. That said, the always lean style of dry Breuer Rieslings shaded a bit too far into the green spectrum in some of this year’s renditions, and no members of this collection (including the one bearing that word on its label!) make concessions to charm. The levels of acidity truly are without precedent in the modern history of the estate (2004 came closest in that regard), levels more appropriate to the formidable single-vineyard nobly sweet wines that Breuer has crafted, and which – despite none exceeding 300 half bottles in production – will be sold half in 2009 (alongside the dry single-vineyard wines) and half at some future date. Breuer, incidentally, avows that it is deceptive to point to increasingly early harvests at his or any other top address solely as indications of climate change, because at least for most of the late 20th century, he insists, yields were much higher, thus demanding longer hang-time.
Imported by Classical Wines, Seattle WA 206 547 0255
robert_parker
2006
Rating:
90
–90
The 2006 Rudesheimer Berg Schlossberg Riesling trocken offers a very different personality from its Berg stable mates – or rather, it takes some of the same themes and develops them to dramatically different effect. This has the creamy opulence as well as sheer intensity of apricot, pungent grapefruit, and minerals, but with just enough residual sugar to support them relatively heat-free, and without a dominance of the fruit pits over the fruit. No question the enormous concentration results in an unusually voluminous, aggressive and pithy Riesling but it is not ungainly, and I would be willing to bet on its evolution over at least the next 5-7 years.
Heinrich Breuer and Hermann Schmoranz began their Riesling harvest October 6, and finished in record time. Selective picking and watchful decantation and selection of the musts, rather than the use of treatments, was the approach taken here to the problematic health and botrytis of the vintage. The results included a 40% reduction in volume over their recent average.
Imported by Classical Wines, Seattle, WA; tel. (206) 547-0255
robert_parker
2004
Rating:
88
–88
A floral and marine Berg Rottland bottling was a bit too lean for its own good, but the 2004 Rudesheimer Berg Schlossberg Riesling trocken was generous. Scents of orange, almond and pistachio usher in a juicy yet creamy and substantial palate informed by nut and citrus oils, peach, and piquant, toasty low tones. The finish is long and savory, with a promise of real richness. Figure, though, that this could use 8 or 10 years in the bottle.
Imported by Classical Wines, Seattle, WA; tel. (206) 547-0255.
vinous
2011
Rating:
93
–93
Exuberant bouquet of star fruit, honeysuckle and bay leaf. Dense peach fruit texture and slate-driven minerality are nicely juxtaposed on the palate. Shows excellent depth and spice character on the delicious finish. A hint of residual sugar provides this wine with an air of nobility.
vinous
2012
Rating:
92
–92
Stately aromas of nectarine, honeysuckle and bay leaf. Dense peach fruit texture and slate-driven minerality are nicely juxtaposed on the palate. Excellent depth and spice on a delicious finish. One of the finest dry efforts of the vintage, with only 11.5% alcohol!
vinous
2013
Rating:
93
–93
White peach, lemon oil and nutmeg on the enticing nose. The slightly austere texture gives focus to the star fruit flavor. Pure and complex, intense but elegantly light, this is dry Rheingau Riesling at its best and certainly one of the great wines of the vintage.
vinous
2016
Rating:
94
–94
Scents of white peach, lime and marjoram are accompanied by hints of ocean breeze and quarry dust. The silken palate brims with bright fruit accented by smoky, pungent green herbs and with a sense of crushed stone suffusion. The combination of palpable extract-richness with alcoholic levity (at 11.5%) is striking. The vibrant finish delivers a mouthwatering abundance of mineral salts and displays superb transparency to herbal, crystalline stony, slatey and smoky nuances.
vinous
2017
Rating:
92
–92
Scents of white peach, lemon and sea breeze anticipate the bright, tangy juiciness and marine mineral savor exhibited on a firm but polished palate, while suggestions of peach fuzz, lemon pip and crushed stone add to the invigoration of a vibrantly- and mouthwateringly-sustained finish.
robert_parker
2014
Rating:
94
–94
Super stony and pure on the very deep and intense nose, which displays ripe fruit and refreshing lemon aromas, the 2014 Rüdesheimer Berg Schlossberg Riesling Trocken is a full-bodied, powerful wine with melting stones as well as an enormous salinity and structure. It is very grippy, firmly structured, and very long and complex. A great and persistent wine. Lots of finesse and elegance.
robert_parker
2016
Rating:
95
–95
The 2016 Rheingau Riesling Rüdesheim Berg Schlossberg has a very clear, deep, pure and flinty bouquet of bright fruit and crushed stone aromas. This is absolutely fascinating in its purity, finesse and complex elegance. Round and terribly lush on the palate, with very fine tannins and ripe, crystalline acidity, this is a highly elegant, delicate and complex Riesling that is enormously filigreed yet tensioned and long. A goddess of the greatest finesse and elegance. The sweetness, body and minerality are in perfect balance. Release date: March 2018. Tasted October 2017.
robert_parker
2008
Rating:
91
–91
The Breuer 2008 Rudesheimer Berg Schlossberg Riesling trocken is lemony and bright throughout, as well as suffused with mirabelle distillate, crushed stone, and a wafting perfume of iris and peony. As in the corresponding Roseneck, a high-glycerin richness of texture helps ameliorate the sharpness of acidity. One really tastes the tiny-berried intensity of the crop – from which two nobly sweet wines had already been picked-out – in a palpable sense of extract on the palate and the chew of fruit skin and bite of white pepper that join citrus zest and stone in the finish. This is as gripping and as opposite from soothing as the vintage gets! Follow it for 6-8 years.
At more than 9,000 man hours including the time spent on intensive selection, Heinrich Breuer says this was one of the most labor-intensive and expensive harvests in the estate’s history. “We have 80 parcels in Rudesheim and are very conscientious about checking each one every couple of days to make sure the acidity doesn’t drop too low, to check the must weights, and to deal with any issues that might arise. We were in fact happy to have gotten around a half a gram more acidity at harvest than in the 2007s,” continues Breuer, who says it was really the phenolics and not the quality of acids or levels of sugar that changed while they picked in the course of October. Reports have reached me of the extent to which the top 2008 vintage Rieslings here are said to have became more harmonious and complex in the course of last autumn, so I may well have underestimated them based on my September tastings. But I was already totally disarmed and amazed by the quality of the several best nobly sweet wines, coming as they do from an estate that treats that genre very much as an afterthought (or, more accurately, as a part of pre-harvest provided noble rot is already there) and from a vintage in which so few such wines were essayed nation-wide.
Importer: Classical Wines, Seattle WA; tel. (206) 547-0255
robert_parker
2009
Rating:
91
–91
At 11.5% the lowest in alcohol Breuer single-vineyard wine in many years, their 2009 Rudesheimer Beg Schlossberg Riesling evinces aromas of green tea, lily-of-the-valley, narcissus, and fresh lemon. Infectiously juicy, invigoratingly bright, and persistently, intriguingly floral and herbal, this buoyant Riesling offers further fascination in its finishing deposit of crushed stone, salt, and suggestively crystalline mineral nuance, all vibrantly interacting with citrus and flowers. Polished in texture even if lean in terms of body fat, acidity, and mineral adamancy, it should be worth following for at least 6-8 years and might prove more ingratiating in personality after a few years in bottle.
Theresa Breuer underplayed the effects of drought conditions during late summer and early autumn 2009 on the performance of her familys vines in the exposed, rocky Rudesheimer Berg, and, admittedly, there are drip lines in some locations to compensate. But I can easily imagine a connection between that drought and the somewhat peaky acids and strident personalities of many wines in the present collection, and Breuer notes that the slightly lower must weights and consequently lower finished alcohol of several wines probably also reflects at least in part vine stress. (The measured levels of acidity are still lower this year than in the corresponding 2008s.) Picking began already at the end of September and lasted until October 25, under conditions Breuer described as “relatively relaxed.” Incidentally, I re-tasted the top 2008s at this address and would rate the Nonnenberg and Berg Rottland a notch up on my account in issue 187. This is an instance where 2009 is I believe highly unlikely to ever approach the outstanding quality level of its immediate predecessor. (Note: most of the dry-tasting Breuer wines are legally trocken but not labeled as such.)
Imported by Classical Wines, Seattle WA 206 547 0255
robert_parker
2013
Rating:
95
–95
Theresa Breuer's 9th vintage of the Rudesheimer Berg Schlossberg Riesling trocken since the early death of her father Bernhard appears straw yellow and offers an amazingly clear, fresh, deep and dusty-mineral aroma of lime chutney along with pure rocky flavors. The impressive precision and density on the nose leads to a pure, full-bodied, penetrating mineral though elegant and piquant wine that is as clear as a bell and shaped by a searing acidity and an extremely long and citric finish. Clearly a long-distance runner, I would not start drinking it before 2019 but I'd be happy to have enough to enjoy this wine for a decade then.
robert_parker
2004
Rating:
88
–88
A floral and marine Berg Rottland bottling was a bit too lean for its own good, but the 2004 Rudesheimer Berg Schlossberg Riesling trocken was generous. Scents of orange, almond and pistachio usher in a juicy yet creamy and substantial palate informed by nut and citrus oils, peach, and piquant, toasty low tones. The finish is long and savory, with a promise of real richness. Figure, though, that this could use 8 or 10 years in the bottle.
Imported by Classical Wines, Seattle, WA; tel. (206) 547-0255.