Urziger Wurzgarten Riesling Spatlese Auktion Nr37
⏳ Drinking Window
2025 - 2045
🍽️ Food & Wine Pairings
Spicy Thai or Sichuan cuisine, glazed roast pork belly, and artisanal blue cheeses.
✨ Technical Specifications
Crafted by the legendary Ernst Loosen, this exceptional Riesling hails from the iconic Urziger Wurzgarten, or spice garden of Urzig. This vineyard is a dramatic, dizzyingly steep red volcanic sandstone amphitheater that rises directly above the Mosel River. Unlike the blue slate found throughout most of the region, this unique red soil imparts a distinctively exotic, spicy, and tropical character to the Riesling. The Auktion designation indicates that this specific bottling was selected as an elite lot for the prestigious annual wine auctions in the Mosel. Made from ancient, ungrafted vines and fermented using traditional large oak Fuder casks, this Spatlese represents the absolute pinnacle of the estate's late-harvest craftsmanship, balancing rich residual sweetness with a vibrant, electric spine of 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