Graacher Himmelreich Riesling Auslese
⏳ Drinking Window
2025 - 2055
🍽️ Food & Wine Pairings
Pungent blue cheeses, rich duck liver pâté, and spicy Sichuan or Thai cuisine.
✨ Technical Specifications
Nestled in the steep, sun-drenched slopes of the Mosel Valley, the Graacher Himmelreich—or Kingdom of Heaven—vineyard yields a Riesling of celestial complexity. Dr. Loosen, a historic estate managed by the visionary Ernst Loosen, crafts this Auslese from 100% Riesling grapes grown on deep, water-retaining blue Devonian slate soils. This unique terroir imparts a distinct, stony minerality and a vibrant, citrus-led acidity that beautifully balances the wine's natural sweetness. Hand-selected at harvest, often featuring a portion of botrytis-affected berries, the grapes undergo traditional fermentation with indigenous yeasts in large, neutral oak casks. The result is a wine steeped in Mosel heritage, offering a rich tapestry of stone fruit, wild honey, and wet-stone minerality.
🍾 About the Producer
Weingut Dr. Loosen stands as one of the preeminent global ambassadors of Germany's Mittelmosel. Under family ownership for more than two centuries, the estate experienced an epochal renaissance after Ernst 'Erni' Loosen assumed leadership in 1988. Loosen immediately implemented draconian yield restrictions, prohibited chemical fertilizers, and embraced spontaneous fermentations in neutral oak Fuder casks, frequently practicing extended lees contact. The domaine's strength rests in its holdings of ancient, ungrafted vines—many over a century old—clinging to perilous, south-facing slate amphitheaters. These steep slopes span blue Devonian slate in the Wehlener Sonnenuhr, red volcanic-slate colluvium in the Ürziger Würzgarten, and heat-retaining cliffs in the Erdener Prälat. Dr. Loosen is renowned both for crystalline, classically delicate Prädikat expressions defined by buoyant acidity and low alcohol, and for benchmark dry Grosses Gewächs bottlings that celebrate age-worthy, mineral-driven tension.
🍇 Grapes
100% Riesling