Julian Haart Riesling 1000L Fuder 2020

100% Riesling. Julian Haart apprenticed with Egon Müller and Klaus Peter Keller. That’s like learning to draw under da Vinci and Picasso. Julian’s first vintage under his own label was in 2010 and people immediately took notice. Although none of the wine was released in the U.S., David Schildknecht, writing for Parker’s Wine Advocate at the time, penned the following: “Not many wine careers can have started off on a more superlative level than Haart’s, yet from my several conversations with him I am convinced that his perfectionism goes hand in hand with rigorous self-criticism that should preclude success going to his head.” For the record, since vintage 2010 the wines have only gotten better, and while few cases are released in the U.S. every year, Julian is earning a pretty serious following. And it hasn’t gone to his head – he’s still as cool as shit. The estate has grown to a little more than four hectares and this is, roughly, where Julian wants it to stay. Part of the joy of winemaking, for Julian, is doing everything, just he and his wife Nadine, and maybe some friends. This is vineyard work, and winemaking, at the most human scale. Nearly everything must be done by hand – most of the vineyards are steep as hell and most of them are terraced. Even walking through them is a bit hazardous. The overall style is clearly a type of Mosel-hommage to Keller. The wines showcase a glossy, super-pure fruit that shrieks across the palate with a pushing, sharply delineated acidity. Pulverized slate, polished to fine dust, coats everything. The Riesling 1000L is normally dry or very close to dry and sourced from 25-year-old vines in the Grand Cru Goldtröpfchen vineyard. The “1,000L” is so-named because it is a wine that was, originally, a chosen Fuder – a 1,000L barrel. The entire barrel was bought, and that was that. This wine is always brisk, tense with high-toned citrus, good minerality. Julian's wines are Moselle wines of consequence. It is why these wines have infatuated the wine world and are so hard to come by.