[wine] German Austerity - Rieslings

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. -- ------------------------------ * Dr. James Ellingson, jellings(a)me.umn.edu * * mobile : 651/645-0753 * * Great Lakes Brewing News, 1569 Laurel Ave., St. Paul, MN 55104 * * james(a)brewingnews.com James.Ellingson(a)StThomas.edu *