Riesling Marienburg Grosses Gewächs "Rothenpfad" 2023

A dry Riesling from the Pünderich Marienburg that expresses its site through structure rather than fruit. The nose is darkly toned: smoke, petrichor, apple peel and a touch of thyme, alongside red berries, tobacco and peel of kumquat and grapefruit.

The Rothenpfad lies above the Pünderich viaduct. Its name comes from the iron oxide that colours the slate and, in summer, settles as red dust on boots. The south-easterly aspect pays off especially in hot vintages. The 150-year-old vineyard map of the Mosel, Saar and Ruwer already listed the site in the top category. Clemens Busch farms 20 hectares of steep slopes, eleven of them in the Marienburg.

Riesling from vines mostly more than 80 years old. The estate's oldest vines are ungrafted and reach up to eight metres deep into the slate bedrock. After harvest and sorting, an extended skin maceration is followed by very slow, low-pressure pressing and spontaneous fermentation. Clarification happens through sedimentation, with only small additions of sulphur. Ageing takes place in traditional 1,000-litre Mosel oak fuders, with bottling in late summer. Clemens Busch abandoned herbicides back in 1976, and the estate has farmed biodynamically since 1986.

Power and extract define the wine, fruit is secondary. It's all about texture and structure, the iron oxide in the slate, an electrifying minerality and stoniness, joined by tobacco, apple peel and grapefruit zest. A wine that needs cellar time: in a few years it will show considerably more.

Three slate colours define the Marienburg: red, grey, blue. Clemens Busch makes them legible through coloured capsules, with the red slate lending the Rieslings smoky depth. No cultured yeasts, enzymes or fining agents are used in the cellar. In 2023 the estate was awarded the Robert Parker Green Emblem.