Urziger Wurzgarten Riesling Spatlese Nr17
⏳ Drinking Window
2024 - 2040
🍽️ Food & Wine Pairings
Spicy Sichuan or Thai curries, classic roasted duck with plum sauce, and pungent washed-rind or blue cheeses.
✨ Technical Specifications
The Ürziger Würzgarten, or 'spice garden of Ürzig,' is one of the Mosel's most dramatic and legendary vineyards. Rising like a sheer amphitheater of red volcanic stone and clay—a striking geological anomaly in a region dominated by blue slate—this vineyard produces Rieslings of singular, exotic intensity. Dr. Loosen's Spätlese 'Nr 17' is crafted from ungrafted, ancient vines that cling to these dizzying slopes. The volcanic terroir infuses the wine with a wild, spicy complexity, bursting with aromas of star anise, ginger, and ripe tropical fruits. Fermented slowly with indigenous yeasts in traditional oak Fuder casks, this Spätlese beautifully balances its rich, natural sweetness with the Mosel's trademark electric, laser-like acidity, embodying centuries of winemaking heritage.
🍾 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