Red Slate Riesling
⏳ Drinking Window
2020 - 2028
🍽️ Food & Wine Pairings
Spicy Asian dishes such as Thai curry, roasted pork loin with orchard fruits, and fresh pan-seared trout.
✨ Technical Specifications
The Dr. Loosen estate has been in the same family for over 200 years, but it was Ernst Loosen who took the helm in 1988 and propelled it to international stardom by focusing on terroir-driven Rieslings. While the Middle Mosel is famous for its blue slate soils, a unique vein of iron-rich red Devonian slate runs through the steep slopes near the villages of Erden and Ürzig. This 'Red Slate' Riesling is a masterclass in soil expression. The iron content in the red slate imparts a warmer, more muscular, and intensely spicy character to the wine, filled with notes of ripe peach and apricot. Produced using traditional methods, the juice is fermented with indigenous yeasts in large, neutral oak casks called Fuder, allowing the wine to develop a rich texture and complex mineral depth while retaining its signature Mosel freshness.
🍾 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