Riesling Auslese
⏳ wine.drinking_window
Typically best enjoyed 10–35 years from vintage release, with the finest vintages easily cellar-worthy for half a century.
🍽️ wine.food_pairings
Blue cheese, fruit tarts, spicy Asian cuisine
✨ wine.spec_sheet
In the sun-drenched, limestone-rich hills of Westhofen in the Rheinhessen, Weingut Wittmann crafts their Riesling Auslese as a testament to the region's historic sweet wine legacy. 'Auslese' translates to 'selected harvest,' requiring meticulous hand-selection of noble-rot (botrytized) or exceptionally ripe golden berries. Sourced from premier limestone parcels, these grapes undergo a gentle pressing before fermenting naturally in the estate's historic 1829 vaulted cellar. The resulting wine is a masterclass in tension, where the intense, honeyed sweetness of botrytis is perfectly countered by a piercing, salty minerality and vibrant acidity characteristic of Westhofen's ancient soils.
🍾 wine.about_producer
With a winegrowing heritage in the Rheinhessen village of Westhofen dating back to 1663, Weingut Wittmann is a pioneering force in German biodynamic viticulture, having committed to organic practices in 1990 and biodynamics in 2004. Managed today by Philipp Wittmann alongside his family, the estate is globally revered for its precise, terroir-driven dry Rieslings sourced from legendary Grosses Gewächs sites like Morstein, Kirchspiel, and Aulerde. In their historic vaulted cellar built in 1829, the wines are fermented with indigenous yeasts and aged in traditional large oak casks, resulting in structured, mineral-rich expressions of outstanding longevity.