Urziger Wurzgarten Riesling Auslese Nr15
⏳ Drinking Window
2025 - 2055
🍽️ Food & Wine Pairings
Spicy Sichuan or Thai cuisine, rich blue cheeses such as Roquefort, and classic fruit tarts or apple tarte tatin.
✨ Technical Specifications
The Urziger Wurzgarten, or 'spice garden of Urzig,' is one of the Mosel's most dramatic and singular vineyards. Rising like a towering, steep amphitheater directly above the river, its striking red volcanic soil and slate composition set it apart from the region's typical blue slate. This unique terroir imparts a famously exotic, spicy, and tropical character to the 100% Riesling grapes grown here. Crafted by the legendary Ernst Loosen, the Auslese Nr15 represents a meticulous selection of botrytis-affected grapes, often harvested from ancient, ungrafted vines. The wine undergoes a slow, cool fermentation in traditional Fuder oak casks, preserving its vibrant acidity and intense mineral core. Historically, the Wurzgarten has been celebrated for centuries, with its wines once commanding prices higher than the finest Bordeaux, prized for their uncanny balance of rich sweetness and electric, tongue-tingling acidity.
🍾 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