Weingut Knoll, Loibner Riesling TBA, Wachau 2021 - 50cl

Trockenbeerenauslese is the top of the German and Austrian sweet-wine ladder and the hardest thing on it to make. The grapes have to be left on the vine until noble rot has shrivelled them almost to raisins, then picked berry by berry by hand. Yields are tiny. Some years it cannot be done at all, and Knoll do not pretend otherwise.

This comes from the Loibner vineyards above the Danube, where the family has been making some of the Wachau's most precise wine for generations. Riesling is the right grape for the job — it carries enormous natural acidity, which is the only thing standing between concentrated sugar and something cloying.

It pours light golden with a silver cast at the rim. The nose is candied orange zest and fine botrytis spice, with florals and honey lifting underneath. What is remarkable is the palate: for a wine this sweet it stays precise and mineral, built around fine yellow peach and nectarine, with crunchy red apple keeping it lively and a creamy texture underneath. Then the acidity comes through and scrubs everything clean, and the finish runs on into tropical fruit and orange peel. Nothing about it feels heavy. At 50cl, this is the right size for a wine you sip in small glasses while a long evening winds down.

How to Serve

Serve chilled but not cold, 9-11°C. Too cold mutes the aromatics and makes the sweetness read as syrup. A small white wine glass. Once opened it will keep happily in the fridge for a fortnight, and unopened it has decades ahead of it.

Where to Drink It

The Wolseley, with something at the end of the meal. Scott's in Mayfair as a quiet nightcap. Noble Rot, whose list adores exactly this sort of rarity.

Food Pairings

A fruit tart — apricot or peach — or simply on its own as the pudding, which is how I would drink it. It also does the classic trick with blue cheese: Roquefort and a sweet Riesling is one of the great pairings, sweetness and salt cancelling each other out.