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The wines of Weingut Martin Müllen have received consistently high ratings from the international wine critic Robert Parker. The reviews highlight the clarity, character, and distinctive style of our Mosel Rieslings.
2025 Weingut Martin Müllen Trabener Würzgarten Riesling Kabinett
Robert Parker Points: 93+
“The 2025 Trabener Würzgarten Riesling Kabinett is crystal clear, intense and aromatic on the complex nose that reveals ripe fruit with coolish, clayish slate aromas. Picked with 82 degrees Oechsle on September 24, this is a generously lush yet precise and crystalline Kabinett with mouthwatering grip and slate salinity. I recommend to keep the wine in the cellar for at least five years even though you can also enjoy it at this early stage. This is wine no. 3772, and it was bottled with 8% stated alcohol. Natural cork. Tasted at the domaine in March 2026.”
2025 Weingut Martin Müllen Mosel Riesling Kabinett
Robert Parker Points: 93
“Predominantly from the Kröver Kirchlay with a tiny bit from Trabener Würzgarten, the 2025 Mosel Riesling Kabinett is beautifully openhearted yet pure and refined, with a reductive yet also aromatic nose thanks to the late harvest, on October 17. Round, wide and crystalline on the palate, this is a remarkably finessed, light but also lush and sensual Kabinett that is based on ripe, aromatic fruit and reveals an irresistible aromatic and saline character. It is fabulous. This is wine no. 3771, and it was bottled with 8.5% stated alcohol and 28 grams per liter of residual sugar. Screw-cap closure. Tasted at the domaine in March 2026.”
A few years after my last visit to Martin and Susanne Müllen and their son, Jonas, a wide selection of wines from various vintages was on the table for tasting at their five-hectare estate in March. Only two wines from the 2025 vintage were among them, both exquisite Kabinett Rieslings, while it was still too early for other wines from the vintage, which had been problematic in the fall due to rainfalls. Additional fruit-forward Prädikat wines will not be bottled until late May, and the dry Rieslings will not be bottled until late July or early August. Just at the beginning of May, a 2023 Spätlese from a specific plot in the Kirchlay vineyard was bottled; it spent two years in a barrel on the full lees and was then allowed to rest for several more months on the fine lees in stainless steel. Müllen describes it as “exceptionally rich, dense and powerful” and is currently still considering how many stars to award it. Although I have yet to taste the wine, there are more details about the specific plot further down (in the fourth paragraph).
Otherwise, the focus of the tasting was on the current 2024 vintages (featuring an impressive quartet of dry Spätlese wines from Kröver Letterlay alone but also Steffensberg) and the magnificent 2023s in the noble sweet category, including captivating predicates from Auslese over Beerenauslese (Letterlay again!) to an incredibly concentrated Trockenbeerenauslese from Hühnerberg. A few 2022s and 2021s were also included; these are two vintages that were enormously contrasting in their development but comparable in the end due to their moderate must weights. The 2021s are cool and with racy acidity, compared to the warm and generous yet also firm and structured 2022s, which include a unique Pinot Noir that was macerated for more than eight weeks—a wine that can only be found on the Mosel.
In 2025, the Riesling harvest began very early, on September 24—by which time many estates were already nearly finished. Müllen had already harvested the Pinot Noirs on September 12 and 16. The harvest at Müllen dragged on until October 18. Only Sundays were harvest-free; otherwise, Martin and Jonas didn’t even let the rain stop them. "At the Würzgarten in Traben, we even harvested partly in the rain because only the canopy was wet, but the grapes were relatively dry. We covered the filled vats, of course. The juice that had seeped into the vats was sweet thanks to the fully ripe berries, and the must weight was even higher than that of the freshly pressed must, which is also made from less-ripe grapes," explains Müllen. So, despite the rain, there was no sign of dilution.
The minimal-pruning plot in the Nostel vineyard of the Kröver Kirchlay, home to the aforementioned 2023 Spätlese, was the last to be harvested—by hand, of course, like all grapes at Müllen. The berries were remarkably healthy despite lower must weights, which speaks to the merits of this unusual-looking plot. The plot was designed primarily to save time when it was established in 2016: there is a vine every 60 centimenters, with a bare trunk reaching two meters in height, from which the canes and shoots hang down like a bell on both sides over the high-tension wire, providing shade for the grapes. The row width is a generous 3.6 meters so that the “canopies” do not intertwine. “Grape ripening is always moderate in this system; and the acidity remains lively because there are very many clusters with tiny berries, and behind each cluster there are many small, hard leaves that nevertheless ensure sufficient fruit ripening,” says Müllen. “The grapes and berries are small and stemmed like currants, and they have a very different ratio of skin to juice than berries grown on wire trellises.” There are also fewer seeds. Müllen goes on to explain that “due to the quantity of grapes and their stems and skins, the press cake from the basket press is twice as large as that from normal grapes.”
Even if the vineyard isn’t likely to win any beauty contests, it’s effective. That’s because during the growing season, the vineyard is more or less left to its own devices. The only thing that can’t be skipped is pest control. It’s intensive and has been carried out by helicopter since 2025. The grapes ripen late under the jungle-like canopy of leaves and remain healthy even in difficult years, tasting incredibly intense, fresh and spicy—even despite the rain, as in 2025. The downside, Müllen says, is that "yields are variable. If they’re good one year, you have to expect them to be low the next."
Müllen made another observation in 2025. “The longer the harvest lasted, the more the fruit juice evaporated—despite the damp weather. By the end, that amounted to 5% to 10% per day,” Müllen estimates. At the same time, the must weights naturally rose rapidly.
Many other winemakers did not go that far. When the rain came in mid-September, the grapes were not yet ripe enough to be harvested soon. But even toward the end of the month, the must weights were a very moderate 83 to 85 degrees Oechsle. For many winemakers, this was sufficient, and the quality is likely to reflect that. In good sites and with low yields, however, must weights of 95 degrees Oechsle were also achieved by the end of September.
The 2024 vintage brought frost to the Hühnerberg, located in the side valley, in April, resulting in a small yield. In the Kröver vineyards, however, there was no damage. Harvesting took place from October 7 to 30; only the small amount of Pinot Noir, limited by the frost, was harvested as early as September 21. "2024 was a vintage for Kabinett and Spätlese because we couldn’t harvest anything above 100 degrees Oechsle," says Müllen. "The must weights remained moderate for a long time and only rose significantly from mid-October onward, as did the internal ripeness of the grapes." Today, the 2024 Rieslings display incredible radiance, reminiscent of the great vintages of the 1980s and 1990s. They have wonderful, ripe acidity and plenty of aging potential. In five to six years, everyone is likely to fall in love with Müllen’s 2024s as well, so it’s best to secure some cases of them today.
But that’s exactly the advice to follow regarding the 2023 vintage as well. At the very least, anyone who appreciates richer, sweeter Rieslings—from Spätlese to Trockenbeerenauslese—shouldn’t hesitate here. Yet there was also a major problem in 2023: acetic rot! It developed rapidly after the rain in the warm month of August, especially in the hot, west-facing vineyards like Paradies. “Here we had significantly more acetic acid than in Hühnerberg, even though the grapes weren’t even ripe yet, which is very unusual," Müllen says. "So, with a heavy heart, we abandoned 95% of the Paradies grapes and moved to Hühnerberg relatively early, where, after hot days and cool nights, we were able to harvest healthy grapes, some of which had dried out naturally." The ripeness of the grapes in Hühnerberg is always high, even though the terraced steep slope cools down significantly in the evenings due to its location in a side valley. That is what makes Hühnerberg special and turns it into a unique Riesling vineyard.
In 2022, there were water stress issues along the Mosel, particularly in stony vineyards with little topsoil. But this was not so for Martin Müllen, who does not drive heavy machinery over the soil and compact it to the point where it can no longer absorb water. In the surrounding area, by contrast, the leaves had often already turned yellow in August. In Hühnerberg, which has stony soils, the ground remained wet until spring, allowing wild oats to grow abundantly. When the weather turned dry, the oats withered to a straw-yellow color and collapsed, thereby protecting the soil from heat and drought.
Sometimes, even in viticulture, you just have to get lucky.
Stephan Reinhardt - Robert Parker Wine Advocate
Published: May 28, 2026
