Urziger Wurzgarten Riesling GG Reserve Alte Reben
⏳ Drinking Window
2024 - 2042
🍽️ Food & Wine Pairings
Spicy Asian dishes such as Thai red curry, roasted pork belly with five-spice, or pan-seared scallops with ginger-butter sauce.
✨ Technical Specifications
The Urziger Wurzgarten, or 'spice garden of Urzig,' is one of the Mosel's most iconic vineyards, famous for its striking red volcanic sandstone and slate soils that stand in stark contrast to the region's typical blue slate. This unique terroir imparts a famously exotic, spicy character to the 100% Riesling grapes grown here. Dr. Loosen's Grosses Gewachs (GG) Reserve Alte Reben is sourced from extremely old, ungrafted vines—some over a century old—which yield tiny, highly concentrated berries. Embracing historical winemaking traditions, winemaker Ernst Loosen ages this dry Reserve wine on its full yeast lees for an astonishing 24 months in traditional, neutral oak Fuder casks, followed by additional bottle aging. This patient process tempers the vineyard's fiery acidity, resulting in a dry Riesling of monumental complexity, seamless texture, and profound mineral depth.
🍾 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.