Incredible amounts of bad sparkling wine are produced and drunk in Germany, as the discount version is in demand locally. However, there are more and more terrific exceptions, including Ratzenberger – even at the price of a bad champagne!
Riesling sekt shows more terroir via the characteristics of the grape and often appears more floral (but still crisp) than champagne, which has more of a yeasty feel and, via the Burgundian varieties, is less grape-characteristic than Riesling.
Ratzenberger Bacharacher Riesling Sekt Brut is made from grapes from the Kloster Fürstental field with the Rhine as a neighbor, just south of Bacharach, where slate dominates but with a hint of clay.
The wine has spent almost four years on the lees before disgorging; much longer than the legal requirement of nine months, which gives the wines both complexity and fine bubbles. The smell and taste also exude the fresh aromas of apple and white flowers mixed with complex yeast aromas from the riesling grape.
It’s hard not to drink this dry, elegant and crisp sparkling wine young, as it tastes excellent now, but if you have patience and enough bottles in stock, we can report that it ages more than brilliantly. We have tasted 20-year-old bottles of this wine, which still had a future.
Enjoy the wine not only as an aperitif, but also try it as a companion to sushi, tapas/antipasti, rich, creamy soups (where a voluminous chardonnay can become tiresome in the long run), to smoked salmon and most starters with white fish.
Enjoyed in a spacious champagne glass or a narrow white wine glass at a serving temperature of 7-10° depending on temperament.
91 points Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate
“Aged sur lattes for almost 48 months, Ratzenberger’s lemon-yellow colored 2018 Buchuracher Riesling Sekt Brut is a beautiful sparkling wine from the wild romantic Mittelrhein, Clear and discreet on the nose, with fine Riesling-on-slate aromas typical for the terroirs in Bacharach, with finely intense yellow apple and quince aromas as well as a dash of fresh lemon juice, this is a gentle, round, fresh and juicy sparkling wine with a light to medium-weight body, a very fine and lively mousse and a fruity /juicy texture, The delicate finish is not bone dry but just perfectly round and with herbaceous notes as well as a piquant slate spice. This is a very fine and typical Middle Rhine Riesling that is also, but not only, suitable as an aperitif. This Sekt is disgorged fresh as required”
“…one of those German sparkling wines that offer a lot of style and class for relatively little money.”
TWA, Stephan Reinhardt, November 2023
