Okonomierat Rebholz Birkweiler Kastanienbusch Riesling Grosses Gewachs, Pfalz, Germany 2023

Birkweiler Kastanienbusch Riesling GG 2023 is a benchmark dry Riesling from one of the Pfalz’s greatest vineyards. Kastanienbusch is Birkweiler’s signature grand cru site, planted on iron-rich Rotliegend red slate, which gives the wine an unusually smoky, stony, savory character. The 2023 is powerful but incredibly precise, with notes of citrus, peach, apricot, wild herbs, hay, black tea, smoke, and flint. There is tremendous acidity and density, but the defining feature is the almost endless, saline mineral finish.  For a collector, this is a serious, age-worthy German dry Riesling—very much in the conversation with top GG producers of the Pfalz and capable of evolving beautifully over decades.

"The Kirrweiler 2023 Kastanienbusch Riesling GG opens remarkably fine and flinty, with a stunningly tropical bouquet of just-ripe mango aromas intermingled with tea and herbal as well as rose resin and vegetal aromas. Very complex and also highly refined, it's a beautifully intense and noble nose. Sourced from the highest, steepest and most shallow part of Rebholz's four-hectare holdings in this 18-hectare cru, this is a remarkably pure and saline yet dense and intense, very complex Riesling from red-colored Rotliegend soils, a conglomerate of volcanic (melaphyre) rocks, slate, sand and clay. This is a fascinating, bone dry yet not ascetic but juicy and textural Riesling that is the most complete of the GGs. 12.5% stated alcohol. Natural cork. Tasted at the domaine in January 2025." Wine Advocate 97