WTN: The Grunhaus of the Rising Sun

[David M. Bueker]

2012 Von Schubert Maximin Grünhäuser Abtsberg Riesling Kabinett - Germany, Mosel Saar Ruwer (12/19/2022)
When this was first released it was unbearably reduced. It smelled like a tire fire. I was very concerned that it would be forever undrinkable. Five years after the vintage it had started to turn a corner, shedding some of that reductive funk with significant help from a lot of air. Fast forward to 2022, ten years post vintage, and the wine was wide open and fresh from the moment the cap was unscrewed. No decanting necessary to unleash the vibrant green apple and white peach fruit. It’s actually both extremely youthful and very rich, feeling more like a solid Spätlese than anything resembling Kabinett. All that said it’s wonderful that the reductive character this showed in youth is gone, and not it’s a question of how long it will take for this to start developing bottle-aged complexity, and shed some youthful fat.

Beautiful transformation. Amazing how wine can evolve.

JJ Pruem's wines are notorious for having a lot of sulfur on the nose when young, but in their case it's SO2, not mercaptans. The smell of burning tires specifically is thiophenol. Good to hear that it dissipates if you're patient.

-Paul W.

[David M. Bueker]

JJ Pruem's wines are notorious for having a lot of sulfur on the nose when young, but in their case it's SO2, not mercaptans. The smell of burning tires specifically is thiophenol. Good to hear that it dissipates if you're patient.

-Paul W.

The sulfur thing with the Prums is largely gone these days. Still some definite sponti funk but not nearly the stink of vintages prior to say 2005.