The Trabener Riesling 2018 Gaispfad is pure and floral/herbal on the deep nose, which reflects the iron-rich blue slate terroir of the southwest-facing vineyard as well as the warm vintage with its intense and concentrated ripe fruit aromas. It is full-bodied, quiet and elegant on the palate and displays some minty/floral notes on the finish?this is a great terroir wine from the Mosel. The wine shows remarkable finesse and elegance for this vintage, and there is not more than 12% alcohol, which is pretty spectacular and even more reason not to miss this gorgeous wine. Tasted in May 2020.

The nose fascinates with its intimation of the myriad fruit and mineral flavors that await the taster. Impeccably pure, luscious pear and white peach are laced with crushed stone and an oyster-liquor-like amalgam of mineral salts, algae and nutty-sweet animal protein. The feel is satiny, with a strain-it-through-your-teeth sense of mineral matter, and buoyancy born of 11.5% alcohol. An infusion of juicy fresh lime lends consummate refreshment to a strikingly transparent, sensationally sustained finish that milks the salivary glands. (By the way, this is legally trocken, albeit at the upper range of permissible residual sugar, and decidedly dry-tasting. There having this year been no separate Gaispfad Kabinett Trocken, what little there was from each of Weiser and K?nstler's Gaispfad parcels informed this one wine. Each year, the two of them go back and forth about which of their dry wines to declare their ?Grosse Eule? - ?Great Owl? - a designation that pokes some fun at ?Grosses Gew?chs,? but one they also take seriously. As you can tell, I think this was their 2016 deserving of that honor.)