Product information

Selbach Oster Zetlinger Sonnenuhr Auslese Riesling*** 375ml 2017

Riesling

$96

$92ea in any 3+
$88ea in any 6+
Closure: Cork

Description

If you want to understand the flavour profile of Botrytis grab on of these and a Max F Richter Auslese and try them together. Oster’s *** has around 30% botrytis infected fruit. The concentrating effect of Botrytis increases sugar and acid levels, as well as layering in a wonderful array of baking spices, ripe apricot, marmalade flavours and beyond.

Botrytis levels are one of the key differentiators with the riper Mosel styles. Prüm doesn’t introduce Botrytis into the mix until you get to their Gold Cap wines. Oster’s star system indicates the level of Botrytis * the lowest and so on.

Oster’s Auslese is a divine nectar beautifully balanced with cleansing acid. It achieves that trick of being luscious yet refreshing.

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Check out all of the wines by Selbach Oster

Why is this Wine so Yummy?

“Great Mosel Kabinett should be like drinking cool spring water; thirst quenching and delicious.” says Johannes Selbach. Mosel Rieslings have a balance which should be found in dry wines as well as the sweet. It is this tension between acidity, fruit and minerality which is Riesling’s unique and defining character.

Johannes explains “I personally prefer, like my late father and grandfather, less sweetness in ‘sweet’ wines, and love a firm texture that I would describe as ‘crunch’; like when you bite into a ripe fruit with firm skin and flesh. Hence we are making more fruity wines than obviously ‘sweet’ wines.” The sweetness is that of biting into perfectly ripe fruit, where you have the combination of juiciness and mouth-watering acidity at the same time, like biting into a perfectly ripe apple (Kabinett), peach and apricot (Spätlese) or of ripe tropical fruit (Auslese). Clean Botrytis will add elements of honey and smokiness to good Mosel Riesling. Riesling, regardless of style, should have a mineral core and acid backbone which are the structure, the spine and bones of the wine, supporting the fruit components.

Compared to Richter’s wines, Oster’s are definitely an edge drier.

About Selbach Oster

Family Selbach-Oster have been wine growers in the middle-Mosel for 400 years. They own 23 hectares in and around the beautiful village of Zeltingen, 98% which is planted to Riesling. They are authentic Mosel gemstones that are without question totally delicious. The vineyards are farmed organically and this philosophy extends to the winery with natural yeasts and a hands-off approach. Grapes are picked by hand and fermentation is in large format oak vessels. Selbach wines are true characters. Wines with structure, wines that display their heritage, rooted deep
into the slate rock like the old vines themselves – many of which are still on their own vinifera roots and indelibly shaped by their unique terroir. They age beautifully for many years and gain complexity as they age. Selbach-Oster produces classic Mosel Riesling flavor and true complexity while displaying clarity, minerality and precision.

In the Vineyard

In the Winery

Selbach-Oster Rieslings are not “Zeitgeist”-trendy wines that change according to the whims of fashion. Nor are they “made” according to a recipe. Though they are deeply delicious, they do not seek to “seduce” with short-term exotic aromas from specially cultured yeasts, aromatic enzymes or ice-cold fermentations. They are true characters, wines with structure, wines that display their heritage, rooted deep into the slate rock like our old vines – many of which are still on their own vitis vinifera roots.

Shaped by their unique terroir, our wines come with their own original characteristics, which we strive to preserve and not to alter. They will age beautifully for many years and gain complexity. They present a wide variety of aromas, depth of flavor and true complexity while also showing clarity and minerality.

Peach, apricot, apple, as well as citrus fruit and herbs are typical features of the aroma of our young and dry wines. Our delicately and subtley sweet wines show nuances of quince and tropical fruit, and the ripest of them will display honey and raisin flavors, often backed by a touch of salty minerality, and always balanced by crunchy acidity.

These wines are long lived and develop additional complexity through secondary and tertiary aromas that enrich the taste spectrum.

Grapes are gently pressed at low pressure; the juice settles by gravity and is then fermented in naturally cool cellars at low temperatures, predominantly in traditional oak Fuder with wild yeasts.

The German System

Wow, even the most dedicated wine geek often has trouble getting their head around the German naming systems, something they’ve been working on simplifying!

When it comes to wines containing some level of grape sugar, the Germans have a classification that dictates ranges of sugar levels grapes for a specific wine must be picked at, in essence establishing a framework for the ripeness, amount of Bortytis and shrivel / raisoning the fruit should have when picked. The amount of grape sugar left in the wine after it has fermented, is up to the maker.

All of this super detailed information is interesting to know.

At the end of the day the most important thing is whether the wine meets those standard criteria for good wine. During Riesling Down Under it was great to hear winemakers from around the world, all saying they don’t care much for the numbers, they picked their fruit on flavour and made their wines to achieve balance and harmony.

The following is courtesy of Dr Loosen, who sums up German Riesling styles with sweetness beautifully

The Versatility of Riesling

Riesling is one of the few grapes that is capable of producing a complete spectrum of wine styles, from bone dry to lusciously sweet. The key to maintaining top quality throughout this broad range lies in a rigorous selection process. As the harvest progresses, we make daily decisions about each vineyard parcel based on the maturity of the fruit and the prevailing weather conditions. Healthy grapes are painstakingly separated from botrytis-affected fruit, and the various selections are vinified separately.

Classic Wines with Sweetness

Our traditional wines, with residual sweetness, are selected from the harvest according to their ripeness and flavour development. The finest lots from our classified vineyards are bottled with their corresponding single-vineyard name and ripeness (Prädikat) level. For the non-botrytis wines, there are two Prädikat levels, Kabinett and Spätlese.

Beyond the lightly sweet Kabinett and Spätlese bottlings, made without botrytis, there are three Prädikat levels of botrytis-selection wines that get progressively sweeter: Auslese, Beerenauslese [berry selection] and Trockenbeerenauslese [dried berry selection]. In addition, when vintage conditions allow it, we produce Eiswein from grapes that have frozen on the vine.

The picture from Dr Loosen above is a great illustration of the different conditions of grapes at harvest and the styles they are destined to make. You can see the level of Botrytis and shrivel / raisining increasing as we move through the styles from Kabinett to Trockenbeerenauslese. The Botrytis or Noble Rot, imparts wonderful flavours and textures to the wine, and is to be revered like the blue moulds of Rocquefort and the washed rind cheeses of Munster in Alsace, appropriately both cheeses marry beautifully with a glass of Riesling.

Note how the buckets are colour coded according to the end destination of the fruit and how little of the Trockenbeerenauslese is produced. The skill of pickers and willingness to pass through the vineyard several times to ensure all grapes are picked at the optimal time is the key to success.

The freshest style is Kabinett and as you move up the scale you’ll see additional complexity added by botrytis and other winemaking influences in addition to greater levels of sweetness. Each style whether Kabinett or Eiswein being perfect for consumption on different occasions with different foods. The Beerenauslese, Trockenbeerenauslese, and, Eiswein being exceptional dessert wines. Kabinett and Spätlese being suited to table wine consumption. The standard line for the German’s being that where the English offer tea to guests in the afternoon the German’s offer Kabinett or Spätlese wines, more akin to a table wine. That said I devoured a Wagner-Stemple Kabinett, with pasta and cheese on a 38°C day in Melbourne, perfection! Auslese sitting on either side depending on the style the estate makes.

This intense sorting process is beautifully articulated by Ernie Loosen from 2min 25sec in the vineyard below.

The 2017 Vintage at Selbach Oster

David Schildknecht, Vinous

Johannes Selbach is among the minority of Mosel to report a successful rebound of secondary growth from an April frost that he acknowledged struck even steep sites where he had never before experienced frozen buds. Selbach’s team had already started harvesting Riesling on September 17, but he didn’t feel in any rush (the last day of picking was to be October 24), reporting that thanks to an early weeding out of less-than-desirable botrytis, subsequent fruit was either clean or quite nobly rotten – as witness a TBA, two BAs, and no fewer than nine different Auslesen, if one includes the three annual parcel-designated results of en bloc picking that are legally Auslesen even though the estate doesn’t refer to them by that name. So confident were the Selbachs in the fundamental healthiness of their late-ripening fruit that one parcel in Himmelreich was even left hanging for Eiswein and abandoned only when, come early January, a suitably deep frost had still not arrived. Selbach is keen to emphasize his sector’s having experienced just enough summer rainfall in 2017 to stave off drought stress or shutdown. “Sure,” he admitted, “it would have been nice if we’d gotten the big late summer rain two or three weeks earlier instead, but you can’t have it all.” Those last five words could also apply to a relative paucity of legally dry bottlings as well as a low total volume of off-dry Kabinett, a category that Selbach champions; but there are notable successes this vintage in nearly every category, and Selbach unhesitatingly characterized his 2017 collection as among the finest, if not the finest, in more than a quarter-century heading up his family’s estate.

Where in the World is Selbach Oster?

Selbach Oster is in the middle Mosel.

The Mosel River Valley is probably the most famous and arguably the most admired wine region in Germany. In its wider sense, it includes the adjacent Saar and Rüwer (hence Mosel-Saar-Rüwer), both tributaries of the Mosel River, however, it is the middle Mosel (mittelmosel), in particular between and including the towns of Bernkastel-Kues and Erden that the most brilliant wines tend to be produced. Bernkastel, Grach, Wehlen, and Zeltingen are some of the most famous wine towns here.
You can see just how incredibly steep the vineyards of the Mosel can be and how dominant the slate rock is, often driving the root systems meters into the hillside.

The best vineyards of Germany’s Mosel Valley are incredibly steep, south-facing slopes with mineral-rich slate soil and a favourable position near the river. Excellent drainage and the heat-retaining quality of the rocky slate soil also help to produce fully ripe, concentrated wines. The combination of these elements results in racy, mineral-inflected Rieslings that are fruity, crisp and very refreshing to drink.

Map by Fernando Beteta, MS @fernandobeteta on Twitter
96+ Points

The 2017er Zeltinger Sonnenuhr Auslese was harvested at a full 122° Oechsle from very old un-grafted vines. It offers a deep and highly complex nose reminiscent of that of a BA as notes of mango, honey, some raisin, fig, orange marmalade, and candied pineapple emerge from the glass. Creamy viscosity, apple jelly, baked spices and marzipan as well as mirabelle and candied plum underline the BA character on the lusciously creamy palate. This beauty is still on the sweet side but already impresses through its hugely long finish and beautiful presence in the after-taste. It may even exceed our very high expectations at maturity if it gains in finesse. 2032-2067

Mosel Fine Wines

93 Points

This “three-star” bottling wears its botrytis influence rather obviously, beginning with the radish- and lemon-peel-like prickle, ominous smokiness and overlay of mushroom exhibited on the nose alongside intimations of honey, white raisin, brown spices and quince jelly. The rich and custardy yet paradoxically airy and brightly juicy palate evokes lemon meringue slathered with quince jelly and gooseberry jam. This embryonic elixir finishes with brash intensity and cheek-tugging grip.

David Schildknecht, Vinous

Where in the world does the magic happen?

Weingut Selbach Oster, Uferallee, Zeltingen-Rachtig, Germany