 September the VDP, our association of Germany’s finest wine growers, holds an auction of limited-production, high-end wines. For that auction, we make two wines from Dr. Loosen.
Our naturally low-yielding old vines in Ürziger Würzgarten produce small, seedless grapes, such as these, that will become our auction Spätlese.
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The first is a non-botrytis special selection of Ürziger Würzgarten Spätlese from our very oldest vines, which naturally produce an extremely concentrated and pure wine. The other wine is our very rare, botrytis-affected Erdener Prälat Auslese Long Gold Capsule, which is hand selected in the same way as Trockenbeerenauslese. Each of these wines is identified by a special VDP sticker on the bottle.
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Another of nature’s rare and wonderful gifts in our area is Eiswein (literally “ice wine”). We hold aside certain plots of vines, hoping for a deep enough freeze (minimum –8° C, or 17° F) to harvest frozen grapes. These grapes are picked in the wee hours of the morning and pressed while they are still frozen, to slowly squeeze out a few drops of precious nectar (the water stays behind as ice). The result is a vibrant, racy dessert wine that is strikingly different from the rounder, more honeyed style of the botrytis wines. 
A frozen cluster of Riesling
grapes, ready to be harvested for Eiswein.
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