The 2016 Scharzhofberger Spätlese has a clear and smoky/stony bouquet as well as a very delicate, bright and ripe (yet botrytis-free) Riesling aroma with floral and almost peppery slatey notes—fascinating! Mouth-fillingly lush and piquant on the palate, with beautifully generous, round and elegant fruit, remarkable intensity and length, this is a gorgeous Scharzhofberger made to drink for ages. Don’t drink before 2030, and don’t die before 2060. Tasted March 2018.

This was a pretty small harvest at the Scharzhof and Le Gallais. Only seven wines were bottled from the 2016 vintage that brought a great Scharzhofberger Eiswein but not any other predicate from this prestigious cru above Spätlese. "There was hardly any botrytis," Veronika Lintner told me. As a result we have to deal with super clear and precise 2016s that taste less rich and sweet than in "normal" vintages but, despite their current backwardness, reveal great purity, finesse and piquancy. There is really no 2016 I would recommend to drink at an early stage (as always!), not even the Scharzhof, which probably needs a decade to gain more complexity and charming roundness. At the Scharzhof, comparisons are made with the 1997 vintage, which drinks terribly well today at the age of 20+. In 2016, Egon Müller again selected two different Kabinett wines; of these, the Alte Reben (AP #3) was auctioned in September last year. The phenomenal Eiswein (AP #7), however, went into the free market like all the other wines. It was picked on two days—November 30th and December 5th—and is one of the finest I have tasted from the 2016 vintage. Due to peronospora, the harvest was smaller than in 2015 (45,000 versus 49,000 bottles), but "this is the new average here," Veronika quoted Egon Müller who was absent when I came in March 2018. The 2016 harvest started in the late first third of October and continuted for a week before the team paused to wait for some botrytis, which did not occur, though. "The grapes we picked were virtually too healthy for the Scharzhof style but that's something we had to accept," Veronika said. Besides the only Auslese from Le Gallais (from the Wiltinger Braune Kupp, which was auctioned in September 2017), she poured me the highly promising 2010 Scharzhofberger Auslese, which is still a baby and needs at least another decade.