Description
Eva Fricke, Dry Riesling
Over the last five years, Eva Fricke’s limited range of dry Rieslings has taken the world by storm. Eva went from quietly producing 400 bottles of wine in 2006 while managing the cellar at the illustrious Weingut Leitz to becoming one of Germany’s most celebrated “new-school” producers. In addition to training under several German legends, Eva has also worked in the cellars of Spanish icon Dominio de Pingus and one of my favorite traditionalist Barolo houses, Castello di Verduno. Though Eva’s estate is barely over 15 years old, you’ll find her incredibly well-priced gems in Michelin-starred restaurants around the world. If you’re lucky, you might even stumble across a few bottles in boutique wine stores. Other than that? You’re essentially out of luck. With accolades like “Newcomer of the Year,” “Best Start-Up,” “Rising Star of the Year,” and “Riesling Heroine,” finding these bone-dry, crystalline, age-worthy Rieslings has become harder with each passing year.
Today’s Rheingau Riesling bottling is a blend of her vineyards from Rehingau’s top villages: Eltville, Hattenheim, and Keidrich—which are rich in sandy loess and loam—and Lorch, which contains slate soils peppered with quartzite. Her winemaking is clean and pure. This cuvée, vinified dry (trocken), saw four months of aging in stainless steel tank, on fine lees, and was bottled without fining.
If you can’t tell by now, I concur with the current tidal wave of praise regarding Eva’s wines. Everything I’ve tasted has been accessible and breathtakingly delicious upon release, yet one doesn’t have to take more than one sip to also notice the astounding depth, quality, and energy in her wines will take cellaring in stride. That’s one of the everlasting beauties of Riesling: the most long-lived expressions of the variety aren’t closed and opaque in their youth. On the contrary, today’s wine is lively and extroverted now and will remain so for several years to come. With a quick decant, the wine unveils aromas of peach and yellow apple with the slightest tropical hint, but what keeps this so mesmerizing isn’t the array of fruit, but the ripe, juicy, and absurdly refreshing quality of them. With lifted acidity and a soft presence of crushed stone, it’s hard not to call this the most balanced wine of the lot.
