The first impression is a bit deceptive, because this comes across as a great riesling TBA, but it is way more than that, thanks to the electric acidity that takes this enormous concentration and honeyed richness and shines an almost blinding searchlight on it. And this doesn’t even tell you that the wine has a truly incredible density of dried mango and papaya aromas. Gigantic finish that is so fresh and pure your mind struggles to make sense of it. From organically grown grapes. Drinkable now, but best from 2028.

Picked on Sunday October 1 after the harvest team had already been sent home, the golden/apricot-colored 2023 Schloss Johannisberg Blaulack Riesling Trockenbeerenauslese shows a super intense and concentrated, spicy and flinty bouquet with apricot, honey and white nougat and the finest champignon notes intermingled with refreshing iodine notes of the Schloss Johannisberg terroir. Sourced in a lower part where the vines are raised on cordon, this is a viscous, seamless and vivacious, crystalline, saline and precise TBA with a spectacularly sharp laser sword of acidity of 17 grams per liter. Bottled with 6.5% stated alcohol and 270 grams per liter of residual sugar, this is a rich and intense, very concentrated yet finessed and even uplifted TBA made for eternity. - Stephan Reinhardt