Fritz Haag Brauneberger Juffer Sonnenuhr Riesling auslese Gold Cap / 2023 / 375mL

Description:

The Fritz Haag Brauneberger Juffer Sonnenuhr Riesling Auslese Gold Cap 2023 is a sweet, gloriously fine-boned Mosel Riesling in a 375mL half bottle, built on tension rather than sheer richness. Gold Capsule bottlings are Haag's strictest selection, and in 2023 the Juffer Sonnenuhr was the only site that reached that standard.

Aromatically it is all yellow peach, apricot and mandarin peel, with honeysuckle and a faint waft of ginger from the noble rot in the selection. The palate is sweet but weightless, the fruit lifted rather than syrupy, with quince paste and lime cordial running through the middle.

Acidity does the structural work here, a fine thread of it cutting straight through the sugar and leaving the finish clean, slatey and long. Texture is silken instead of heavy, and the wine keeps arriving in waves well after you have swallowed.

A half bottle makes this an easy proposition for two: pour it with a blue cheese and pear plate, a lemon tart, or a bowl of ripe stone fruit, or serve it alongside spicy Thai or Sichuan cooking where the sweetness has a job to do. Half bottles also mature faster than 750s, so this is the format to open when you want Auslese complexity without a fifteen-year wait.

Drinking beautifully from 2026 through to around 2040, with the small format bringing that development forward.