Weingut Hermann Ludes Herman Riesling 2022

In most vintages the wines is fermented to just off-dry (in 2021 it has about 26 grams residual sugar per liter with 10.8g of acid) and flaunts a precocious balance, a magical, just barely perceptible off-dry-ness that reminds me of the Weiser-Künstler Feinherb, yet the Ludes is not quite as cut or lifted. This is a curvier, also lighter and more ephemeral-feeling wine – as if you don’t really even have to drink it, as if it will just saturate and then evaporate, leaving a pleasing sorta wine-tingle.

From the Importer: " Even though we are blessed with our growers in the Mosel, well, we’ve always wanted more. Why? This is a magical place; its wines are unlike anything else on earth. We wanted more of this place. And this is the first Mosel Estate in 9 years that we've taken, let that tell you something about how important we think it is"

The young grower is Julian Ludes, whose grandfather Hermann Ludes had started the eponymous estate in the 1950s. Ludes has flown under the radar for decades for a number of reasons. First, the village Thörnich is located in an upper section of the Mosel, far away from the famous “Hollywood Mile” of the Mosel. Further, Thörnich is legendary for shaping wines that are raw and tensile; the wines of Hermann Ludes especially can be brutally structured. In other words, these are not easy wines.

The “Hermann” – named after both the founder as well as his first-born son, the current proprietor along with his nephew Julian – is the “basic” wine. Interestingly, the family has some flatland vineyards (previously these fields were where the animals grazed, back in the times of poly-agriculture) some of which have slightly more interesting gravelly soils.

In most vintages the wines is fermented to just off-dry (in 2021 it has about 26 grams residual sugar per liter with 10.8g of acid) and flaunt a precocious balance, a magical, just barely perceptible off-dry-ness that reminds me of the Weiser-Künstler Feinherb, yet the Ludes is not quite as cut or lifted. This is a curvier, also lighter, and more ephemeral-feeling wine – as if you don’t really even have to drink it, as if it will just saturate and then evaporate, leaving a pleasing sorta wine-tingle.