Parker 94, 

Daniel Wagner's 2022 Sylvaner Reserve displays an intensely golden-yellow color and opens to a deep, refined and mineral nose with ripe, elegant and refined fruit aromas that are perfectly intermingled with phenols, saline notes of crushed rocks and discreet but even more complex sur lie notes. It's beautifully refined yet also utterly deep. Highly finessed and elegant on the first palate, this is a pure, refined and weightless but full-bodied and multilayered, very long and intense yet not alcoholic Sylvaner of outstanding elegance, class and style. Sourced in those vineyards in Siefersheim with stony, skeleton yet rich sand, gravel and clay soils and porphyry rock in the subsoil and aged in German oak stücks and halbstücks, the 2022 develops enormous length. The wine sells for an unreal 20 euros in Germany, and there are probably quite a few consumers who are dazzled by the price and do not realize that it would also be reasonably priced at three times the price if this exciting Sylvaner were placed in a different context. 13% stated alcohol. Diam cork. Tasted in January 2024.

I tasted Daniel Wagner's GG Rieslings only in Wiesbaden and haven't tasted the whole range so far. Earlier this year, I tasted three vintages of his Sylvaner Reserve, which I have always liked a lot. In Neu-Bamberg's cru Heerkretz, Klaus Peter and Felix Keller are harvesting their crazy mineral Sylvaner “vom Austernfels” from fossil-rich soils. Five hundred meters further, in Siefersheim Am oberen Horn, the fruit for Wagner-Stempel's Sylvaner Reserve, from 20- to 30-years-old vines trained in cordon, is growing on volcanic soils at an altitude of 280 meters in two east- and north-facing parcels. Matured in 600-liter halbstücks for 10 to 11 months, the wine combines intensity, complexity and length with a mineral structure and freshness. It's a great wine for little money. The following vintages will be sold as Erste Lage (premier cru).

Suckling 94: Noch sehr jugendlich mit einem faszinierenden Zusammenspiel von Mirabellenfrucht und blättriger Komplexität mit Noten von frischen Kastanien. Sehr rauchig am Gaumen mit einem wunderbaren Zusammenspiel von zurückhaltender Cremigkeit, feinen Tanninen und einer diskreten, aber animierenden Säure. Sehr langer Abgang. Aus der Lage Oberen Horn mit Porphyr-Vulkanböden, die nach Meinung mancher das Prädikat GG verdient hat. Ausgebaut in gebrauchten 600-Liter-Eichenfässern. Aus biologisch angebauten Trauben. Jetzt trinkbar, aber am besten ab 2025.

DE-ÖKO-022 Deutsche Landwirtschaft