It's rare that all of us - myself, Joe and Tom - are able to sit down and taste together. But when we got a call from a new German importer bringing in the top producers of the often-overlooked Lower Mosel, previous engagements were cancelled and believe me we were all present and accounted for.

While at the moment the wines of the Lower Mosel are relative rarities sought out and obsessed over by the impassioned few, this is going to change.

The top producers of this region are beginning to catch the critics' eyes (Clemens Busch was just voted into Germany's VdP!) - and for good reason. The best of these bottles are incredibly complex expressions of Riesling that veer towards a drier, more compact style. They also happen to be radically undervalued.

Case in point: Clemens Busch's 2005 "Vom Roten Schiefer" is a wine that overflows with a spectacular richness and complexity in this decidedly drier style; this is a bottle for more than just Riesling fans! At about $20 this is my "go-to" bottle for affordable indulgence!

The Lower Mosel is famous for its frighteningly steep vineyards and its drier wines of compact complexity and filigreed finesse.

This region includes, perhaps counter-intuitively, the most northerly section of the river, from roughly Zell down to the suburbs of Koblenz, where the winding Mosel empties itself into the mighty Rhein.

Though the region has always played second fiddle to the Middle Mosel, the Lower Mosel includes some very well respected vineyards, such as the Punderich's Marienburg, Bremm's precipitous Calmont and the terraced wonders of Winningen. The quality of the wine from the region's great slopes just cannot be denied; as Stephen Brook writes in The Wines of Germany, "The correlation between steepness of site and quality of wine has been well established."