The leanest, meanest, most challenging white wine? 2019 Jonas Dostert Elbling from the OberMosel

View on Reddit:  https://old.reddit.com/r/wine/comments/1p3cwqf/the_leanest_meanest_most_challenging_white_wine/

2019 Jonas Dostert Elbling Alte Reben, Mosel

Every so often you taste a wine that challenges not only your expectations but also your whole frame of reference.  

Clocking in at just 10% alcohol and driven by crazy seashell and lemon pith flavors, and reminiscent of tart mountain spring water, this is the most dry and demanding wine I’ve had in a long time. There is no sweetness to cushion the wine and it's dry, dry, dry. This is like a slice of lemon wrapped around an icepick.

Elbling is a unique, uncommon grape found in the OberMosel, a region primarily on limestone rather than slate, and close to Luxembourg.  Elbling has a really delicate fruit character but a really clear mineral/mountain stream water kind of flavor.  Do you like super-fresh, snappy, sassy white wines?  Do you LOVE oysters?

The grape skins are super thin so Elbling grapes don’t always make it to harvest time in usable condition.  The flavors are subtle even when concentrated, so obvious- it’s not.  This is a wine for the freshest preparations and delicate cuisines. It's a lot of fucking effort for an extremely particular taste - but Dostert is clearly passionate about discovery in order to work this hard for a wine so few people will ever get to try (just 50-ish cases this vintage).

This is the wine people imagine when they are told about the mouthwatering,sinewy, skeletal Chablis of old - or of Muscadet de Sevre et Maine.  It makes those wines look wildly lush and blatant by comparison…  Dostert’s Elbling is a really narrow thread - a single pencil stroke of a wine, that somehow carries a lot of meaning.  

Jonas also makes an incredible, low-alcohol Chardonnay as well as a blend of red and white grapes called Carambolage.

Hopefully useful information:  Imported into the US by vom Boden/Grand Cru Selections. Newcomer Wines in the UK.  Also available at German merchants like Pinard de Picard and Weinfurore.