October 14, 2011
German Rieslings, Too, Go Austere
By ERIC PFANNER
ELTVILLE AM RHEIN, GERMANY . Austerity is all the rage in Germany. Its budgeteers are not
the only people spreading the word that less is more. Have you tried any German wine
lately?
While classic, sweet German Riesling still attracts a cult following in places like
Britain and the United States, Germans now consider anything with even a hint of sugar the
ultimate in kitsch. As a result, German producers are shifting from sweet to dry wines.
Yet even some Germans were shocked by the dryness, the austerity, of the Rieslings from
the latest vintage to be bottled, 2010. How dry are these wines? Painfully so, in some
cases. Deliciously so, in others.
.This is not wine to sit down and relax,. said Raimund Prüner of the S.A. Prüate in the
Mosel region. .This is food wine. We make wine, not fruit juice..
Last year was a freak vintage in Germany. First, the vines flowered irregularly, leaving
growers with a tiny crop. In central and southern parts of western Germany, where the
Mosel and the other main German wine regions are located, the summer started with a heat
wave, but that was followed by lots of rain and hail in August. The harvest was
labor-intensive.
Some German journalists initially labeled 2010 an .Arschjahr,. which translates loosely as
a bad year. That assessment was premature.
Growers who were patient, waiting until late October or even November to harvest, picked
Riesling grapes that were unusually ripe . but also, bizarrely, unusually high in acidity,
which normally fades the more the grapes ripen.
This provided the raw material for wines that display an exquisite tension. They are rich
and concentrated but also, because of the acidity, dry and fresh. Imagine corking up a
Greek fiscal planner and a German accountant in a bottle and letting them fight it out.
This juxtaposition, of ripeness and acidity, is exactly what fans of sweet Riesling crave,
and 2010 certainly looks like a great vintage for the dwindling number of sweet German
wines. But what about the dry Rieslings? Would they, too, manage to strike this balance?
Or would the acidity, which is prominent in dry Riesling even in normal years, overwhelm
in the 2010 vintage?
The VDP, the main trade association for wine growers in Germany, showed off more than 100
of the best dry German Rieslings at tastings last month at the Eberbach Cloister, which
nestles among the vines in the Rheingau region, near the city of Wiesbaden.
The producers featured their so-called Grosse Gewäse, which means .great growths. . or, to
use the more familiar French equivalent, .grands crus.. The adoption of the term,
introduced only a decade ago, reflects growers. newfound ambitions of making dry wines
that can rival the great chardonnay-based whites of Burgundy.
The jury is still out on that effort, not least because of confusion over the naming
system. The German wine authorities have not endorsed the Grosses Gewäs designation, so
growers are not permitted to print it on their labels; generally they just use the
initials .G.G..
Just to make things more complicated, one German wine region, the Rheingau, has adopted a
rival designation for its best dry wines: Erstes Gewäs, which is equivalent to the French
term .premier cru,. or .first growth.. This is permitted on labels.
What is more, these recently introduced terms sit alongside a longstanding classification
that employs separate terms to indicate ripeness levels. This system is more useful for
sweet wines, but some growers also use it for their dry wines, which are sometimes labeled
as such, other times not.
And, at a time when Americans like to shorten the names of grape varieties like cabernet
sauvignon and chardonnay to .cab. and .chard,. German producers still delight in selling
wine under colorful, polysyllabic, alliterative vineyard names like Kreuznacher Kröpfuhl
or Ruppertsberger Reiterpfad. (.Kreuznach turtle pond. and .Ruppertsberg riding path,.
respectively.)
As challenging as German wine nomenclature can be, that is nothing compared with actually
tasting the wines . at least, tasting more than 100 dry 2010 Rieslings in a single
afternoon. Rarely have I encountered such a range of styles and quality in a group of
wines from a single vintage and a single variety, all of them ostensibly made in the same
general way.
At their worst, the 2010 Grosse Gewäse are sudsy, carbolic and bilious. At their best,
they are among the most sublime young Rieslings I have tasted . perhaps among the best
young whites of any kind. Fortunately, there were quite a few examples of the latter:
wines that were engineered with Teutonic precision but that danced across the palate,
intertwining ethereal citrus notes with a seam of serious salinity.
As with any good Riesling, minimalist winemaking . there.s that austerity again . is
crucial. While chardonnay, for example, is often aged in small oak barrels and subjected
to a secondary fermentation to fatten the wine, such treatments are frowned on by lovers
of German Riesling. As a result, any flaws in the terroir, the vintage or the winemaking
are cruelly exposed.
While some producers decided to de-acidify their 2010s to flesh them out and make them
more approachable, others decided to work with what nature provided.
.For many people, the question was, where do we go with a vintage like this?. said
Christoph Graf, commercial director at the Reichsrat von Buhl estate in the Pfalz region.
.Do we want to emphasize the potential power, or the expression of the site? We were
convinced that the material was there, it was ripe..
The best dry 2010s combine power . in a coiled, compact kind of way . with site
expression, something that became clear when running through four different Grosse Gewäse
from Von Buhl. All of them were from vineyards in the village of Forst, but the style
varied from direct and saline, for the Pechstein, to rich and expansive for the
KirchenstüThe strongest-performing regions seemed to be Pfalz and Nahe, which is named
after a tributary of the Rhine that lies north of Pfalz but south of Germany.s two
best-known wine regions, the Mosel and Rheingau.
Some growers in the Mosel still seem more comfortable with sweet wines or with lighter
weight, more delicate dry whites than with the intense, concentrated Grosses Gewäs style,
which is like the Mercedes S-Class of German winemaking.
That is not necessarily meant as a criticism. I think 2010 favored the approach of
producers like Reinhard Heymann-Löstein, a Mosel maverick who stops the fermentation of
his top .dry. wines just short of completion, leaving around 20 grams, or 0.7 ounces, of
sugar. Because of the high acidity in 2010, these wines still tasted dry, though not
punishingly so. Yet they breach the Grosses Gewäs rules, and are not permitted to carry
the .GG. designation, despite being shown off at the VDP tasting.
As the new standard-bearers for German winemaking, the Grosse Gewäse come at a price .
usually, at least .20, or $26. Yet even the best bottles rarely cost much more than .35,
so they compare favorably with top whites from regions like Burgundy.
Speaking of prices, there is another advantage to buying these wines, at least for readers
in Europe: the quality of German online wine shops. Retailers like Wein Refugium and
Pinard de Picard deliver to my home in Paris at .10.50 and .9 per case, respectively .
about half the fee that most French Internet retailers charge for domestic delivery.
As good as some of the wines from the top estates are, I.m not sure 2010 is the best
vintage to introduce Riesling neophytes to the pleasures of this variety, or to German
wines more generally. The 2009s, which are widely available, are much more user-friendly,
and considerably more consistent.
Aficionados, on the other hand, ought to consider adding some of the dry 2010s to their
cellars.
.It really is a year for Riesling lovers,. said Oliver Mü winemaker at the Wagner-Stempel
estate in the Rheinhessen region.
October 14, 2011
Abundant Austerity
By ERIC PFANNER
Here are some dry 2010 Rieslings that made strong first impressions. The first name is
that of the producer, followed by the vineyard site and, finally, the wine region.
Döoff, Hermannshö, Nahe. For me, the best wine of the tasting, from one of the most lauded
producers in Germany. Complex citrus notes. Poised and refined, like a Puligny-Montrachet
from Burgundy. About .33.
Schär-Fröch, Felseneck, Nahe. The Nahe region is firing on all cylinders. This fully
leaded, high-octane example sent German critics into rapture. It is smooth and very long.
About .38.
Robert Weil, Gränberg, Rheingau. A civilized wine from a producer that is best known for
its sweet output. The ferocious acidity of 2010 has been nicely tamed here. About .35.
Reichsrat von Buhl, Jesuitengarten, Pfalz. From one of several top sites in the village of
Forst. This combines salinity and breadth and will be very digestible . in time. About
.30.
Wittmann, Aulerde, Rheinhessen. The most approachable of three Grosse Gewäse from this
estate, which produces concentrated, deep yellow Rieslings, balancing the fruit and
acidity nicely. About .24.
Wagner-Stempel, Höerg, Rheinhessen. A very ripe wine that shouts out, .This could only be
Riesling,. even if it is fruitier than most of what was produced in Germany in 2010. About
.24.
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* Dr. James Ellingson, jellings(a)me.umn.edu *
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* james(a)brewingnews.com James.Ellingson(a)StThomas.edu *