Riesling Eiswein
⏳ Drinking Window
2023 - 2050
🍽️ Food & Wine Pairings
Fruit-based desserts like apple tarte tatin, pungent blue cheeses such as Roquefort, or rich savory starters like artisanal duck pâté.
✨ Technical Specifications
Dr. Loosen's Riesling Eiswein is a rare, luscious nectar born from the dramatic, steep slate slopes of Germany's Mosel valley. The creation of Eiswein is a high-stakes gamble with nature: grapes must remain on the vine into the freezing depths of winter, waiting for a sudden freeze of at least minus seven degrees Celsius. Harvested by hand in the freezing pre-dawn hours, the grapes are pressed immediately while still frozen. This process leaves the water behind as ice, yielding a tiny quantity of intensely concentrated, golden juice. Ernst Loosen, a passionate custodian of Mosel winemaking history, crafts this wine to capture the tension between vibrant, electric acidity and opulent, honeyed sweetness. The slate soils of the Mosel impart a distinctive, stony minerality that prevents the wine from ever feeling heavy, preserving a pristine purity of fruit that has fascinated wine lovers since the accidental discovery of ice wine in the late 18th century.
🍾 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