Nahe

90 Points! The 2025 Riesling combines bright aromatics of lemon balm with juicy, pale peach and lovely creaminess. This is liquid charm, wonderful ease and purest juiciness. The 28 g/l of residual sugar disappears into the citrus and stone notes. (Off-dry) - Anne Krehbiel MW, Vinous

The idea here is to make a village wine, basically, though it’s sold and marketed as a Gutswein or Estate bottled basic wine. The Estate wine combines the two major soils that dominate the holdings for the estate, giving the drinker a look into what Dönnhoff is all about. The basic wine is a calling card and thus Cornelius Donnhoff wants to make statement. The geology of the middle Nahe is notably shaped by its eons-old clay slate formations and rich volcanic soils. The concentration of porphyry and melaphyr stone in and around the old Oberhausen vineyards – Kieselberg and Felsenberg, help provide the perfect berry base for Gutsriesling.

Founded in 1200, the estate is now managed by Prince Felix zu Salm-Salm in the 32th generation. It is the oldest family-owned estate in Germany and cultivates vineyard sites on the Nahe region as well as in Rheinhessen. Bottle fermentation (Méthode champenoise) with 40 months on the lees.

95 Points! A very elegant, intensely minerally, herbal, medium-bodied dry riesling. If you give this youthful beauty a moment in the glass, a wealth of delicate stone fruit notes emerges. Fantastic interplay of wet stone character, fine tannins and citrus zest freshness in the very long and focused finish. Drink or hold. - JamesSuckling.com

99 Points! Welcome to the Bladerunner of Nahe riesling Spatlese. This is also extremely fine and complex, with a cornucopia of stone fruit, exotic fruit and spices. Radical stony minerality and racy acidity, yet with a feather-light mouthfeel on the barely medium-bodied palate. Then you wonder if the wine will ever leave you, so long is the almost endless farewell. Drink or hold. - JamesSuckling.com

97 Points! The 2023 Riesling Niederhäuser Hermannshöhle Spätlese, grown on shale, has equal notions of moss and lemon. More air makes this smell simply of wet stone. The palate carries gentle sweetness but is absolutely precise and slender. Citrus frames everything with the clearest precision. Everything is serene, zesty, tender, yet so very serious. The 2023 is glorious in its lightness and disarming in its elegance. - Anne Krehbiel MW, Vinous Media

With its classic Nahe lines of apricot and pear with some underlying earthy minerality, this wine is in amazingly fine shape. 

It has certainly evolved brilliantly in the bottle and presents a lovely and versatile beverage for current ‘applications’ including as a killer foil for a number of Asian dishes.  A traditional, lightly fruity kabinett sitting in a perfect place from a top German terroir, it was showing exactly what we were looking for in this kind of wine, substance and complexity with both freshness to the fruit and the development of complexing secondary aromas and flavors of wildflower honey, spice and mineral with the fruitiness dialed back.  A piece of history