Gosh, I am in love with the incredibly fine, floral and perfumed ripe fruit bouquet of the 2014 Pinot Noir Trarbacher Schlossberg ***! Can purity and finesse perform any better in a Pinot Noir from the finest slate soils? This is sourced in a vineyard that should be ripped out due to the extremely high costs of cultivation but whose 30-year-old vines (French and German genetics on a super fine blue slate soil) regularly deliver one of Germany's finest Pinot Noirs. This three-starred 2014 opens with a terribly deep, fine, fresh and flinty but also alluring juicy nose with sweet, perfectly ripe red and dark fruit aromas intertwined with very fine slate notes. Incredibly fine, pure and elegant on the smooth, seductively silky and lush palate, this is generous, intense, perfectly ripe and concentrated but also fresh, seamless and weightless. Yes, this wine shows weightless and charming intensity with mind-blowing finesse and unreal balance. This is an insane Pinot Noir from Trarbach, a village that is still underrated for its terrific Rieslings and obviously for its huge potential for great Pinot Noir as well. Did I ever taste a finer Pinot Noir from Germany? This has very fine tannins and a sweet yet still refined, precise, highly elegant and very persistent finish. Crunchy slate flavors add freshness and delicacy. Just 210 bottles were filled in August 2017. I asked Markus why he doesn't sell this beauty for 250 euros, as connoisseurs would certainly pay this amount of money in a second. His reply: "Wait and see." In fact, Markus plans to build a stock of top-class Pinot Noirs that he plans to sell—at adequate prices—only years after the bottling. Tasted three times in March 2018.