While feather light in stature, this semisweet Riesling stuns with intensity. From nose to finish, dark earth tones and luminous stone fruit and cherry flavors meld seamlessly. It's intensely ripe, almost tropical in tone, but an electric tang of acidity and minerality keeps it rooted firmly in the Mosel.

I learned on this trip that the superb estate Riesling from Weingut Egon Müller includes a sizable chunk of Saarburger Rausch in its blend, as the estate has a fine parcel in this vineyard that they choose not to bottle on its own. While part of my heart yearns to taste a Rausch bottling from Egon Müller, the realization that a significant percentage of the blend of this fine villages level bottling is from such a grand cru vineyard makes this wine even more attractive. The 2015 is a stellar wine, offering up a pure and classy nose of apple, lime, a touch of cress, a beautiful base of slate and a gentle topnote of petrol. On the palate the wine is fullish, pure and vibrant, with lovely nascent complexity, bright, zesty acids and outstanding focus and grip on the very promising finish. This will need a few years in the cellar to develop some of its secondary layers of complexity and should age long and gracefully. (Drink between 2019-2040)