Wine Blogging Wednesday #45

Wine Blogging Wednesday is being hosted this month by Tim Elliot at Winecast, a great wine podcast and blog. The chosen theme is European rieslings, and I picked two, a Bollig-Lehnert Trittenheimer Apotheke Riesling Spätlese 2005 and a Rene Mure Riesling Cote de Rouffach 2001. The Mure unfortunately had become oxidized and was a shadow of its former self. The Bollig-Lehnert was a different story entirely.

Bollig-Lehnert is located in Trittenheim along the Mosel River, most well known, if not the best of German wine growing regions. The estates wines are imported by Derek Vinnicombe through WineSellers Ltd. The Apotheke vineyard near Trittenheim is a highly regarded vineyard site and the steep slopes and preponderance of blue slate make for great growing conditions for Riesling. This 2005 spätlese is a livewire, racy, crisp, with steely minerality, and a good core of green apple, apricot and melon fruit. The nose is mostly melon and apple blossoms. Sweetness is restrained and well balanced by the zippy acidity, all in all a great value at the $20ish that I acquired it for.

See my post on the Weingut Baumann 1975 for my thoughts on a German Riesling with more than a few years under the belt.