2016 Smith-Madrone Vineyards Riesling Spring Mountain is sold out.

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95pts: This Might Be Napa’s Best Riesling

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2016 Smith-Madrone Vineyards Riesling Spring Mountain 750 ml

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  • Curated by unrivaled experts
  • Choose your delivery date
  • Temperature controlled shipping options
  • Get credited back if a wine fails to impress

Classics Are Rarely This Humble

There’s nothing like Smith-Madrone’s Spring Mountain Riesling, a wine we’ve been chasing for years but have never offered on Wine Access. It stepped boldly onto the global stage in 1979, winning Best Riesling in the World from French restaurant guide Gault Millau, and has remained an upper-echelon benchmark since then. 

Just last month Decanter called the Spring Mountain Riesling “Napa’s finest,” while today’s 2016—the latest release of this famously long-lived bottling—earned 95 points and an Editors’ Choice selection from Wine Enthusiast. What more is there to say? 

Actually, there’s a lot more. In most cases, this kind of pedigree would and could merit double the price, but that’s not the Smith-Madrone way. As Decanter wrote in a piece celebrating the winery’s 50-year history, “The Smiths are proudly old school in their winemaking philosophy, the age-worthy, balanced wines they make, the reasonable prices they charge, and the homely way they welcome visitors.” At $30, this is a true classic that can be had for a song. Don’t miss it. 

With mineral-etched citrus, juicy stone fruit, and a vibrant acid backbone, the 95-point Spring Mountain takes its cues from the well-structured Rieslings of Alsace. There, in the foothills of the Vosges Mountains, the best Rieslings are grown on steep hillsides where vines can soak up the most direct sunlight, allowing the hard-to-ripen Riesling to reach full maturity while maintaining mouthwatering acidity. In Napa, 1,900 feet up on Spring Mountain, the case is exactly the same. 

Nearly 50-year-old Riesling vines are planted on east-facing slopes with inclines of more than 30 degrees. The rocky clay-loam soils are dry-farmed, pushing the vines to the limit in their struggle for ripeness and survival, but ultimately yielding pearl-like Riesling berries of stunning concentration and aromatic intensity. 

The result is one of the world’s best Rieslings, bred for honesty, seamlessness, and long-term aging. Wine Enthusiast hailed its “enviable structure, complexity and balance,” adding: “Lush on the midpalate, it never loses focus, retaining mineral-like stoniness and linear, fresh acidity.” Expect this to deliver in spades for as long as you can keep your hands off it.