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Buy any 6 bottles and save 5%. Buy any 12 bottles and save 10% (excludes wines on offer). Free UK delivery on orders over £100. Tel: 02922 337454
Buy any 6 bottles and save 5%. Buy any 12 bottles and save 10% (excludes wines on offer). Free UK delivery on orders over £100. Tel: 02922 337454
2024 Wehlener Sonnenuhr Grosses Gewächs Alte Reben Riesling, Dr Loosen

2024 Wehlener Sonnenuhr Grosses Gewächs Alte Reben Riesling, Dr Loosen

Mosel, Germany

Pure, finely chiselled and beautifully elegant, this is dry Mosel Riesling from one of Germany’s great blue-slate vineyards. White peach, lemon zest and crisp green apple lead into spring blossom, crushed stone and subtle herbal notes, with the old vines bringing an impressive sense of depth beneath all that delicacy.

The palate is sleek and wonderfully precise, combining juicy citrus and stone fruit with vivid acidity and a cool, saline slate character. There is real concentration here, but nothing feels heavy. Instead, the wine is long, linear and quietly powerful, with 12 months on the full lees adding texture while leaving the mineral definition beautifully intact. A serious, age-worthy Riesling that captures the graceful side of Grosses Gewächs.

For when: You want a serious white wine that impresses through finesse rather than sheer weight.

Pairs with: Roast turbot, scallops, grilled prawns, crab, sushi, sea bass, roast chicken, pork schnitzel, asparagus, creamy vegetable dishes or mild Alpine cheeses.

Wehlener Sonnenuhr, the Sundial of Wehlen, is one of the defining vineyards of the Middle Mosel. Its spectacularly steep slopes rise above the river and are dominated by fractured blue Devonian slate, with remarkably little conventional topsoil. The famous sundial on the hillside has become the vineyard’s emblem. Dr Loosen’s parcel includes vines more than a century old that remain ungrafted on their original rootstocks, giving naturally low yields and exceptionally concentrated fruit. Grosses Gewächs, abbreviated GG, is the VDP designation for a dry wine from a classified Grosse Lage vineyard, effectively placing this among the estate’s most important dry Rieslings.

Whats in the bottle
Riesling 100%

Notable Awards
94 Points, James Suckling

£44.00 - £44.00
£44.00
£44.00 - £44.00
£44.00
Availability:
In stock

Dr Loosen is one of the defining estates of the Mosel and one of the producers most closely associated with the modern international reputation of German Riesling. The Loosen family has owned vineyards in the region for more than 200 years, with Ernst “Erni” Loosen taking control of the estate in 1988.

He inherited an exceptional collection of steep vineyards containing very old, frequently ungrafted Riesling vines. Rather than masking the differences between sites, the estate places vineyard character at the centre of its approach, using careful selection, low-intervention cellar work and extended maturation to allow each site to express itself clearly.

Dr Loosen has been a member of the VDP since 1993, and several of its vineyards rank among the Middle Mosel’s historic great sites. Wehlener Sonnenuhr is particularly associated with delicacy, perfume and fine mineral definition, while vineyards such as Ürziger Würzgarten and Erdener Prälat show very different expressions of Mosel Riesling.

For customers, the Wehlener Sonnenuhr GG Alte Reben represents the dry, serious side of Dr Loosen: ancient vines, one of the Mosel’s great terroirs and a style built around precision, mineral character and longevity rather than sweetness.

The 2024 Wehlener Sonnenuhr Riesling GG Alte Reben is made from Riesling grown on the extremely steep blue-slate slopes above Wehlen. The vines used for this bottling are over 100 years old and ungrafted, surviving on their original rootstocks in the rocky, well-drained vineyard soils.

The 2024 growing season was challenging across the Mosel. Spring frost, hail and prolonged periods of humidity reduced yields by approximately 30%. Conditions improved during early autumn, and meticulous selection during harvest allowed the estate to bring in healthy grapes. Dr Loosen describes the resulting wines as particularly vibrant, precise and fresh.

For this Grosses Gewächs, fermentation takes place with indigenous yeasts in traditional 3,000-litre neutral oak casks. The wine remains on its full lees for 12 months, with no bâtonnage, allowing texture and complexity to develop without obscuring the vineyard’s natural freshness and mineral character.

The finished wine contains 12.5% alcohol, 8.2 g/L residual sugar and 7.4 g/L total acidity. Despite the small amount of residual sugar, it is firmly in the dry style, with the combination of bright acidity and blue-slate minerality giving the wine a particularly taut, linear feel.

The result is an unusually refined expression of Grosses Gewächs: white peach and spring blossom on the aromatic side, lemon and citrus through the palate, and the darker, stony mineral character of the vineyard providing tension underneath. It can be enjoyed relatively young for its brightness and fruit purity, but the old vines, acidity and extended lees ageing give it considerable potential to develop with bottle age.