2001 was one of the greatest German Riesling vintages in recent memory and put German Rieslings back in the forefront of many wine-lovers minds.

The absolutely perfect weather conditions (like the Bordeaux vintages of '82 and '00) caused collectors, many of whom had never bought Riesling before, to squirrel away cases at a time.

Unfortunately, this increased national spotlight and greater interest in Rieslings means that today it's difficult to find anything but loose bottles that haven't been standing up on a retail shelf for the last 3 years (I should know, I regularly scour the web and call retail stores around the nation to find older wine for my personal enjoyment).

If you can find bottles that have been well stored, they are often riper-style wines that are prohibitively expensive and still "in the tunnel" - a hibernation-like state of aging where their secondary flavors develop. They are very closed and backwards and need several years to re-emerge.

After our initial 2005 Riesling futures campaign lauded the incredible conditions in the middle-Mosel, we received a huge number of inquiries about our omission of some of the best vineyard sites for Riesling in the whole world; specifically the wines of the legendary Joh. Jos. Prüms.

How are the wines in '05?

Let's start with the opinion of the man himself, the historically tight-lipped Manfred:

In a recent conversation with Rudi Wiest, Herr Prüm called it his "best vintage in the past four decades," and said he was "blown away with 2005." Most convincing of all, he is confident that the vintage will stand up to the legendary wines of 1949 (!) ... Quite an early endorsement from a man who waited three years to comment on the 2003 vintage before comparing it to the celebrated vintage of '59.

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."

Click here for the 2010 Kellers.

Weingut Knebel is situated in what is considered the Lower Mosel's best village, Winningen. It is also happens to be one of the warmest areas in the Mosel and therefore the style at Knebel (especially for the dry wines) is muscular and powerful, while (almost miraculously) elegant.

Knebel's dry wines are made by Gernot Kollman, the former winemaker at Van Volxem. The noble sweet wines, also held in the highest regard, are made by Beatte Knebel. Gernot works in a hands-off manner with indigenous yeasts while also using ambitious methods to extract profound aromatics and concentration from the grapes: pre-fermentation oxidation, extended skin contact and high fermentation temperatures.

Read more about the 2010 collection from Weingut Peter Lauer or just click here for Lauer's 2010 lineup.

Blick auf alten Ayler Neuen

Due to your groundbreaking support of our �Riesling Futures� campaign and our corresponding support for some of Germany�s best vintners, we have secured some serious rarities that seldom see the American market.

It certainly helped that we were visiting these same winemakers this summer and was able to taste (and deal) while he was there.

The Palmberg Terrassen is a completely unknown, roughly 5-hectare vineyard that is more than farmed by the Stein family; it is loved by the family. There's a devotion here, a connection to the land that is humbling. Ulli Stein's 87-year-old father has been making wine here since the early 1960s and he still visits the site almost daily, tending to his vines and drinking the wines of the vineyard as often as he can. Ulli Stein's 2008 Palmberg-Terrassen is dense and saturating, darn-near glossy with extract - lime zest, razor-sharp citrus, wild green herbs. The 2008 Stein Palmberg-Terrassen is likely the greatest Riesling value on earth.

Click the button below to see our real-time online inventory of Stein's 2008 St. Aldegunder Palmberg Terrassen Spatlese Trocken:

Roses dot the vineyard here and small sheds provide respite. Due to the severity of the incline, obviously working this site is extremely difficult and tiring. Many acres of the site have gone fallow, overrun by the wilderness. At this point, to the best of our knowledge, the Steins are the only serious producers within the vineyard, farming 1.3 hectares of the site and producing a scant 2 Füders worth of juice - that's only about 230 cases. The 2007 is THE FIRST bottling to be imported into the U.S.!

The shrine that Ulli Stein's father built within the vineyard. To this day, at 87-years-old, Herr Stein still visits his vineyard almost daily. In this picture you also see the "Terrassen," or terraces, that largely define the landscape of the Lower Mosel.

Here you get a real sense of just how very steep this vineyard is.

Another, slightly more panoramic view of the Palmberg-Terrassen vineyard.

Click the button below to see our real-time online inventory of Stein's 2008 St. Aldegunder Palmberg Terrassen Spatlese Trocken:

What can I say, I LOVE Austrian wine. Just such a whacky lineup of really profound, kooky wines, everything showing great. We were hosted by Wolfgang and Eddie at Seasonal, a new Austrian restaurant on 58th Street in Midtown that deserves some serious attention. Sophisticated, pure food with contrasting yet integrated flavors. Really worth visiting NYCers - I can't say enough good things about this restaurant.

We had a lot of wines, but I'm only posting on a few because I'm lazy and I didn't take good enough notes and honestly the great wines were just so, so compelling that they sort of overwhelmed the just plain old good wines.

I have to admit, I struggled with the idea of yet another Riesling email so early into 2007. After your strong interest and support of the 2005 vintage led to its enormous success, I felt that perhaps we should take it easy with the Riesling offers - even though Germany, along with Burgundy and Champagne, is an area whose heat is currently immeasurable.

The 1989 Bert Simon Serrig W�rtzberg Gold Capsule Auslese convinced me otherwise.