Urziger Wurzgarten Unterst Pichter Riesling Reserve GG
⏳ Drinking Window
2024 - 2042
🍽️ Food & Wine Pairings
Spicy Southeast Asian cuisine, roasted duck or pork belly, and aged Alpine cheeses like Comte
✨ Technical Specifications
The Urziger Wurzgarten, or 'spice garden of Urzig,' is one of the Mosel's most iconic vineyards, famous for its steep, amphitheater-like slopes of red volcanic soil and slate. This unique terroir imparts a distinctly exotic, spicy character to the Riesling grapes grown here. Within this grand cru site lies the historic 'Unterst Pichter' parcel, home to ancient, ungrafted vines situated close to the river. For this Reserve Grosses Gewachs (GG), winemaker Ernst Loosen revives traditional cellar practices: the wine undergoes spontaneous fermentation with native yeasts in traditional 1,000-liter oak Fuder casks, followed by an extraordinary 24 months of aging on the full lees. This extended maturation gives the dry Riesling a remarkably creamy texture, structural density, and a complex interplay of tropical fruit, herbal spice, and vibrant minerality.
🍾 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.