2019 Bernkasteler Doctor Spatlese
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Tasting notes
The 2019 Berncasteler Doctor Riesling Spätlese –Reserve– displays an intense yellow-golden color and opens with a dense yet refined and elegant, slightly flinty and crunchy slate bouquet of perfectly ripe fruit and some herbal notes. Lush and salty-piquant up until the stimulating and finely grippy finish, this is a rich but vital and refined Spätlese with lingering salinity and mineral tension. The wine is very elegant and gastronomic in its beautiful mix of juicy, ripe fruit and crunchy minerals. Natural cork. Tasted from AP 29 21 in November 2021.
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Average Score
Jancis Robinson MW
Jancis Robinson MW
More reviews and scores
The nose of the Doctor exhibits an exquisitely exotic composition of fruit and spices. Meadow flowers are not short-changed either. The Doctor Spätlese seems quite a bit sweeter than the Graben but with its diversity of fruit, from orange to passion fruit and juicy gooseberry to nectarine, it wears its residual sugar well and adds subtle nuances of vanilla and cinnamon for good measure. (MS)
The 2019 Berncasteler Doctor Riesling Spätlese offers an intense and spicy bouquet with a remarkable botrytis or raisin tone on the concentrated and refined nose. Sweet, lush and dense on the palate and slightly bitter on the finish, this is a firm yet still astringent Doctor Spätlese that is difficult to tax. It has finesse and concentration, certainly more Auslese than Spätlese character and a long and intense finish, yet all the structural components are still separated. Tasted at the domain in September 2020.
Floral honey is dripping over this slew of white and yellow fruit, and the result is delicious. But there’s also an appealing, dry-herb note that prevents this from tasting obviously sweet, much less heavy. Drink or hold.