WTN: 1993 Nackenheimer Rothenberg auslese ***, Gunderloch

One of my favourite wine producers and a wine from his best vineyard and a splendid vintage, albeit at 15 years of age - what can go wrong? Well, in fact, nothing. After having tasted about 100 different wines from the Mosel - Saar - Ruwer during the last two days, I still felt for another riesling to the Wienerschnitzel we had for today's dinner (isn't it fascinating with riesling - the more you drink, the more you want?!), so I dug out this bottle from my cellar. Their Drei Stelle, Three Stars, is an auslese (late, selected harvest) in a dryish style, thus with as much as 12.5% abv, but still quite a lot of residual sugar. Here are my notes:

A fine golden colour, really sparkling in the glass.
A full, developed nose, with loads of firne - the typical nose of a mature riesling. Slightly burned with lots of honey, petroleum and overripe fruit. Round, powerful, warm and charming.
Thick and oily attack in the mouth with a honey-like sweetness which is wonderfully balanced by a fine acidity and the thick, oily mouthfeel. Long, chewy aftertaste with a distinct but pleasant bitterness. The bitterness helps to make it a good companion to the food and it is also a lovely wine to continue sipping during the whole evening. It is so concentrated and powerful, that one only needs a little at a time and the bottle lasts for long. An excellent wine with a wonderful maturity, probably at its peak now. A very good achievement by Fritz Hasselbach at Weingut Gunderloch in the Rheinhessen.
Cheers, Anders

[David M. Bueker]

Let's see - great producer, great terroir, strict selection...yup, sounds great!

[Jenise]

A fine golden colour, really sparkling in the glass.
A full, developed nose, with loads of firne - the typical nose of a mature riesling. Slightly burned with lots of honey, petroleum and overripe fruit. Round, powerful, warm and charming.
Thick and oily attack in the mouth with a honey-like sweetness which is wonderfully balanced by a fine acidity and the thick, oily mouthfeel. Long, chewy aftertaste with a distinct but pleasant bitterness. The bitterness helps to make it a good companion to the food and it is also a lovely wine to continue sipping during the whole evening. It is so concentrated and powerful, that one only needs a little at a time and the bottle lasts for long. An excellent wine with a wonderful maturity, probably at its peak now. A very good achievement by Fritz Hasselbach at Weingut Gunderloch in the Rheinheesen.
Cheers, Anders

You went into a lot more splendid detail than I did a few months ago (because I didn't take notes as we drank it, just merely mentioned it later), but I too loved this wine. Here is my note:

http://www.wineloverspage.com/forum/village/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=14400&p=120311&hilit=1993+Gunderloch#p120311

You went into a lot more splendid detail than I did a few months ago (because I didn't take notes as we drank it, just merely mentioned it later), but I too loved this wine.
Here is my note:
1993 Gunderloch Auslese: Such a nice impression did the wine above make that when I prepared some chinese dumplings in a lightly sweet spicy ginger sauce last night, I chose this wine which has been in my cellar forever and, I worried, might have been too long in the tooth. Should've asked David first--not long in the tooth at all, it was gorgeous. Deep golden color typical for its age, with all the right flavors and superb balance. Does Gunderloch ever make a bad wine?

Nice to hear that you loved the wine too, Jenise. Just to make sure it was the same wine, did your wine also have a label with three stars? If not, you had a more "normal" auslese, with more sweetness and less alcohol.
Here are the labels (back to the left and front to the right) of the wine I had:

Drei Stelle.jpg

Cheers,
Anders

[Jenise]

Oooh, our bottle's long gone and I don't have more for verification purposes, but I would presume that ours was not the dry version.

How does that AP number work?
I see the last 4 digits are 2194.
Had it said 9421, I'd have understood.
Just when I think I have APs all worked out (ie. ignore all the digits except the year of submission and the bottling number), I see something that throws me completely.

And the fact it wwas necessary to post a photo of the bottle sugests that the Prums rather strange attitude to the AP number (which I recall from David's post some weeks back) is only a recipe for confusion...
cheers,
Graeme

Scroll to the bottom of the following for an explanation of AP numbers:
http://www.germanwineestates.com/unders ... labels.htm

Scroll to the bottom of the following for an explanation of AP numbers:
http://www.germanwineestates.com/unders ... labels.htm

Ah, but you didn't read my question. Looking at the bottle photo, and your quoted website's explanation, I would conclude that this was Gunderlochs 94th submission in the year 1920.
Which was the point of my question. They appear to have reversed the last two sets of digits on the label. How so?
Graeme

Ah, but you didn't read my question. Looking at the bottle photo, and your quoted website's explanation, I would conclude that this was Gunderlochs 94th submission in the year 1920.
Which was the point of my question. They appear to have reversed the last two sets of digits on the label. How so?

Huh?

Are we reading the same AP number? I see 4 379 043 21 94.

Which, according to both the website Steve referred to as well as the quote below from germanwinesusa.com would make this wine application #21 submitted by Gunderloch in 1994.

The AP NR. or "Amtliche Prüfnummer," meaning "official approval number" identifies the wine and is required for all qba and qmp wines. It consists of several blocks of numbers identifying the wine like: 5 169 878 0009 93

* 5 stands for the testing center, where the wine was approved
* 169 stands for the village in which the winery is located that produced the wine
* 878 is the code number for the winery
* 0009 93 reflects, this is the 9th wine tested in the year 1993 (no necessary relation to the vintage of the wine but most often the year after the vintage)