2017 Niederhauser Hermannshohle Grosses Gewachs

Thyme, marjoram, black tea, apple wood and pronounced pit-inflected white peach serve for pungent, smoky intrigue. As the wine takes on air, gentian adds a hauntingly bitter-sweet fragrance. The palate displays an improbably combination of richness, fleshiness and expansiveness with transparency to intricate herbal and diversely mineral impingements as well as conveying something I can only call poise. There is just enough succulence of white peach and brightness of lime to lend luscious appeal and animation while conveying a certain sense of restraint. The prodigious finishing flavors spread like a billowing carpet of herbs and bittersweet-perfume flowers strewn with stony crystals and saliva-inducing grains of mineral salts. This is not a powerful wine; but it is one that makes a powerful and profound statement and lucidly testifies to a great site. Incidentally, there are now typically four Stückfässer of this for a total volume of nearly 5,000 liters, far more than of any other Dönnhoff Grosse Gewächse.

Purity. That's what this is and one could finish there. Or write a eulogy. Orchard, stone fruit, eau de vie, viscosity, vibrancy, vigour, brilliance. Poetry on the palate. (MS)