Weingut Mertz, Dry Riesling, 'Vom Porphyr'

Some wines blindside you—not because of a famous label or grand legacy, but because the liquid in the glass announces itself with such clarity and force that everything else fades into the background. That’s exactly what happened here. From an alum of what is, in my opinion, objectively the greatest producer of dry Riesling on earth—Keller—comes Mertz, a tiny family estate you’ve likely never heard of. And that makes sense: I’m painfully particular when it comes to dry Riesling. It needs to be aromatic, tense, textured, mineral, vertical—and above all, bring genuine pleasure. In the month since launching The Caubleist, I hadn’t found a young dry Riesling worthy of an offer—until this bottle. This one doesn’t just check the boxes; it shoots straight past them. It’s lights-out incredible. Don’t judge the unfamiliar name or the modest label. Judge the wine. You need to know this producer, and you absolutely need to know this bottling. There is rarely dry Riesling of this caliber available at a price remotely approachable. That’s why it’s here today. If you already love Riesling, this will thrill you. And if you’ve never had a dry Riesling you truly loved, this may be the bottle that changes everything.

To place it in context, Germany’s wine world is built on its thirteen Anbaugebiete—the official regions, each expressing its own dialect of Riesling. Mosel, Nahe, Rheingau, Pfalz, Franken… the list reads like the vocabulary of every sommelier exam I ever took. Not all regions are created equal, and each carries layers of complexity. The Rheinhessen, where this wine originates, sits just southeast of the Rheingau and brushes against the Nahe, forming a landscape of rolling hills and almost unbelievable soil diversity. Loess, clay, quartzite, limestone, gravel, fossil-rich sands, and, in rare pockets, volcanic porphyry—Germany’s largest wine region contains geological chapters that read like different centuries of earth’s history. Amid this variety, one word matters immensely: trocken. Fully dry. Taut. Mineral. Precise. It’s the style Germany’s greatest estates have elevated into something architectural—and it’s the style Mertz executes with shocking authority.

The story of Mertz is quietly compelling. The winery is based in the small village of Eckelsheim, where the family has tended vines for generations, but it’s the recent era—guided by the young and deeply talented winemaker Sina Mertz—that has transformed the estate. Her training runs directly through the Keller lineage, and you feel that influence instantly: the insistence on purity, the reverence for soil, the meticulous precision in the cellar. What makes this particular bottling extraordinary is its origin. “Vom Porphyr” refers to a rare vein of volcanic porphyry—a soil type radically different from Rheinhessen’s softer loess or fertile loam. Porphyry is ancient, the fractured remnant of volcanic upheaval, and it gives Riesling a structural backbone unlike anything else in the region. Think tension over opulence, mineral cut over fruit weight, an inner electricity that seems to rise straight from the stone itself.

And you can taste that geology with startling clarity. The 2023 “Vom Porphyr” is pure line and lift—bright, stone-etched, and humming with acidity. The nose opens with lime zest, white peach skin, fennel fronds, a subtle diesel note, and crushed volcanic rock. The palate is even more gripping: razor-focused, saline, and beautifully dry, with a crystalline sense of direction that reminds me why I fell in love with German Riesling in the first place. It’s textured without heaviness, mineral without austerity, and finishes with that rare vertical ascent only great sites produce—a finish that climbs, and keeps climbing.

This kind of structure and cut makes it one of the most versatile food wines you’ll ever put on a table. It absolutely sings with sushi—especially hamachi crudo with yuzu kosho, salmon sashimi, or toro with a brush of ponzu. It’s stunning with Cantonese dishes that demand precision rather than power: steamed whole fish with ginger and scallion, crispy-skinned roast duck, or sautéed prawns with garlic chives. That interplay of citrus, salinity, and volcanic tension slices cleanly through delicate flavors and restores perfect balance with each sip. This is Riesling built for the table as much as for the cellar.